The welfare benefits system in the UK has historically favoured individuals who conform to gender stereotypes: it also increasingly uses surveillance and conditionality to determine who is ‘deserving’ of support. This paper argues that this combination reinforces structures of categorisation...

This editorial introduces ten research articles, which form part of this special issue, exploring the governance of "European values" inside data flows. Protecting fundamental human rights and critical public interests that undergird European societies in a global digital ecosystem poses complex...

Facing the fragmentation of digital space in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations, this article considers regulatory models available to avoid the balkanisation of the internet. Considering government-led surveillance in particular, available strategies are investigated to create a...

In this work, we investigate smart city technologies primarily through an examination of trends in patent filing. We apply machine learning methods both to explore the increasing rates of patent filing globally for smart city technologies, and also to identify the emerging topics on which...

While the GDPR and other EU laws seek to mitigate a range of potential harms associated with smart cities, the compliance with and enforceability of these regulations remain an issue. In addition, these proposed regulations do not sufficiently address the collective harms associated with the...

Smart city technologies can have detrimental effects on human rights, making it crucial to mitigate them in the R&D phase. This qualitative socio-legal study of the Helsinki metropolitan area (HMA) explores how public funding for smart city research and development (R&D), and the data protection...

Smart cities are rarely built smart from scratch. For most cities, “smart city” signifies the presence of several smart city projects that emerge over time from various actors. These projects rely on extensive data and algorithms whose use in urban spaces and/or decision-making processes can...

Privately developed artificial intelligence (AI) systems are frequently used in smart city technologies. The negative effects of such systems on individuals’ human rights are increasingly clear, but we still only have a snapshot of their long-term risks to human rights. The central role of AI...

This article argues that political micro-targeting impacts the fundamental right of thenon-targeted citizens to receive information, and consequently, the democratic public discourse. The right to information is the passive side of freedom of expression, among other protected by Article 10 of...