Chris Reed

The admissibility and authentication of computer evidence - a confusion of issues

The Civil Evidence Act 1968 and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 set out requirements for the admissibility of certain types of computer-produced evidence. As part of the conditions of admissibility these statutes lay down minimum authentication requirements. However, the Acts arguably only apply to evidence that would otherwise be excluded as hearsay and not to direct or real evidence; in such a case the law contains no clear statements as to how that evidence should be authenticated. The paper argues that admissibility and authentication are separate issues, and that the failure to treat them independently gives rise to needless confusion. This failure also directs attention away fmm the urgent need for clear rules governing the authentication of computer evidence. The lack of such provisions is a substantial obstacle to all types of digital communication and data storage.

A Data Protection Impact Assessment Methodology for Cloud

We propose a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) method based on successive questionnaires for an initial screening and for a full screening for a given project. These were tailored to satisfy the needs of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) that intend to process personal data in the cloud. The approach is based on legal and socio-economic analysis of privacy issues for cloud deployments and takes into consideration the new requirements for DPIAs within the European Union (EU) as put forward by the proposed General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The resultant features have been implemented within a tool.

The challenge of hate speech online

Real-world hate speech crimes are defined by reference to the special attributes of the victim. A thought experiment about hate speech in virtual worlds indicates that this approach to the criminalisation of hate speech may not be sustainable.

How to Make Bad Law: Lessons from Cyberspace

There is a clear trend for law and regulation, particularly in cyberspace, to become increasingly precisely specified. The perceived benefit of this approach, increased certainty as to compliance, may be illusory. Over-complex laws have serious disadvantages, particularly a greatly weakened normative effect, and problems of contradiction and too-frequent amendment. The combined effect of these disadvantages can be to produce a ‘bad’ law system, assessed in terms of Fullers internal morality of law. It may also result in a law-system which substantially fails to achieve its intended aims. This article proposes that these defects can be cured by abandoning the search for precision and substituting a method of lawmaking which requires the laws subjects to make their own qualitative assessments of whether they are meeting the obligations imposed on them. This will make the law more easily understandable by those to whom it applies, and will also increase the normative effect of cyberspace law.

Beyond BitCoin—legal impurities and off-chain assets

Blockchain technology allows the creation of distributed ledgers. These distribute control among the players rather than requiring a centralised database, and so can reduce costs and speed up transactions. However, when it is used for assets which exist outside the blockchain itself, an unmodified adoption of the technology would bypass legal and regulatory requirements which, for these kinds of assets, cannot be bypassed without fundamental change to the law. Building those requirements into any blockchain-based system introduces features which are not necessary for performing its core functions, and we call these ‘legal impurities’. The most important legal impurities required are those relating to identification of the parties, and introducing the ability of a trusted third party to make modifications to the ledger. Not only does introducing these legal impurities make fundamental changes to the concept behind blockchain, but it is also essential that they are implemented in ways which do not threaten the integrity of the blockchain as evidence.

Information in the cloud: ownership, control and accountability

Adopting a multi-disciplinary and comparative approach, this book focuses on emerging and innovative attempts to tackle privacy and legal issues in cloud computing, such as personal data privacy, security and intellectual property protection. Leading international academics and practitioners in the fields of law and computer science examine the specific legal implications of cloud computing pertaining to jurisdiction, biomedical practice and information ownership. This collection offers original and critical responses to the rising challenges posed by cloud computing.

INTERNET LAW: WILL ONLINE GAMBLING BECOME LAWFUL?

Abstract Currently most online gambling sites breach Great Britain’s criminal laws, except for pools and online betting. This may soon change if the Budd Report’s recommendations are implemented by the Government. Not only would this change make online gambling a lawful activity, but the new regulatory regime proposed by the Report would be likely to make the UK a favoured location for establishing cross-border online gambling operations.

Copyright in WWW pages: News from Shetland copyright in links to World Wide Web pages

Few would deny that World Wide Web (WWW) pages fall within the ambit of copyright protaction The text of much a page is protected as a literary work, any graphic images as artistic works, any linked sound or video files as sound recordings or films, and the whole as a compilation. It follows that copying of the whole or a sutistantial part of any Web page is an infringement of copyright in the work or works copied. However, prior to October 1996 there seemed little likelihood that placing a link to anothers Web page from ones own page might, in some way, infringe a copyright of the author of the linked-to page. 2 That possibillity was raised for the first time in the case of Shetland Times v Shetland News. 3 This article examines the issues arising from that case, and attempts to analyse how Uk copyright law applies to Web links.

Accountability in the Internet of Things: Systems, law and ways forward

We acknowledge financial support from Microsoft Corporation and from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Accountability in the IoT: Systems, Law, and Ways Forward

The physical, ubiquitous, and autonomous nature of the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) raises various accountability challenges relating to safety and security, privacy and surveillance, and governance and responsibility. The authors consider the IoT’s emerging systems-of-systems nature, providing the broad legal context for addressing these concerns and highlighting directions and opportunities for improving levels of accountability in the applications, systems, and services that will increasingly pervade society.