In situations ranging from border control to policing and welfare, governments are using automated facial recognition technology (FRT) to collect taxes, prevent crime, police cities, and control immigration. FRT involves the processing of a person’s facial image, usually for identification, categorisation, or counting. This ambitious handbook brings together a diverse group of legal, computer, communications, and social and political science scholars to shed light on how FRT has been developed, used by public authorities, and regulated in different jurisdictions across five continents. Informed by their experiences working on FRT across the globe, chapter authors analyse the increasing deployment of FRT in public and private life. The collection argues for the passage of new laws, rules, frameworks, and approaches to prevent harms of FRT in the modern state and advances the debate on scrutiny of power and accountability of public authorities which use FRT. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The key ethical requirements for all AI technologies, including facial recognition technology (FRT), is their transparency and explainability. This chapter first identifies the extent to which transparency and explainability is needed in relation to FRT among different stakeholders. Second, after briefly examining which types of information about AI could be potentially protected as trade secrets, it identifies situations where trade secret protection may inhibit transparent and explainable FRT. It then analyses whether the current trade secret law, in particular the ‘public interest’ exception, is capable of addressing the conflict between the proprietary interests of trade secret owners and artificial intelligence transparency needs of certain stake holders. This chapter focusses on FRT in law enforcement, with a greater emphasis on real-time biometric identification technologies that are considered the highest risk.

During the last few decades new technologies – such as the Internet – have disrupted publishers’, and especially press publishers’, business models. New online services, such as Google and Facebook, meant that people increasingly abandoned paid printed presses. Online platforms enabled sharing of news among users without paying back to press publishers, which led to the decrease in revenue for the press publishing industry. Accordingly, press publishers have been fighting to get copyright laws updated to address the challenges posed by new technological developments. In order to address these requests, the EU has recently introduced a new right for press publishers,1 analysed in this volume by Stavroula Karapapa, that is currently being implemented in the EU Member States. Press publishers hope that this new right will help protect their investment, ensure new streams of revenues and help them survive in a new technological and business environment.

The European Commission’s latest round of discussions on copyright reforms dates back to 2013.1 The first copyright reform package was discussed in 2014, but was never released to the public.2 After reviewing their views, in 2015 the Commission revealed their Digital Single Market Strategy (DSM).3 The DSM outlined a number of policy measures aiming at the creation of a digital single market in the EU, and included copyright law reform as part of this package.4 In 2016, the Commission released a package of documents suggesting reforms to the EU copyright framework, including inter alia the proposed Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market5 (hereinafter “the Proposed Directive”), and a Regulation on Online Transmissions and Retransmissions of TV and Radio Programs,6 accompanied by the Impact Assessment on the modernization of EU copyright rules.7 The Commission’s proposals, and especially the Proposed Directive, have since caused intense debates by stakeholders, commentators, and the EU law-making bodies.8

Introduction

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a new plurilateral treaty with the goal of “improving global standards for the enforcement of IPR [in order] to more effectively combat trade in counterfeit and pirated goods.” It was negotiated by Australia, Canada, the EU (and EU member states in their own national capacity), Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States between 2008 and 2010, leading to the adoption of the final text on 3 December 2010. It is currently undergoing internal ratification procedures in negotiating states. It is open for signature until 31 March 2013; six signatories are needed before it comes into force.

During negotiation ACTA was criticized by different stakeholders on many grounds. First of all, the secret nature of negotiations was condemned by the online community, academics, as well as by the institutions of the EU such as the European Parliament and the European Data Protection Supervisor. Secondly, critics argued that by negotiating the agreement plurilaterally, parties are trying to avoid the established fora for IP agreements (i.e. the World Intellectual Property Organization [WIPO] or the World Trade Organization [WTO]) and thereby threatening the established international institutional framework. Thirdly, although ACTA is intended to be a special agreement made under the auspices of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and thus not derogate from its obligations, some have argued that it may still violate TRIPS. Its legality in some of the negotiating states has been contested. For instance, in the EU, the European Commission has repeatedly made reassuring noises that it will not set any acquis-plus standards, but European academics have warned that ACTA may lack conformity with EU law and require additional action by the EU institutions. Its legality under US law has also been disputed. Various issues addressed by ACTA have been attacked by groups of academics as well as individuals worldwide,probably the most important of which being privacy and restriction on freedom of expression on the Internet, criminal liability and border measures. Last but not least, strong concerns were expressed by developing countries which did not join the negotiations, such as China, India and Brazil. Arguably, ACTA will be extended to non-negotiating parties by being adopted as a new baseline in bilateral negotiations.