Human Rights, Big Data and Technology

In this theme we identified and analysed the positive and negative human rights implications of big data, AI, and smart technologies. We then looked at the existing and developing legal responses to these human rights implications to detect legal and policy gaps in the protection of human rights. From these results, we determined whether and to what extent reform is necessary.

We focused on algorithmic accountability and the risks of potential discrimination in this method of decision making, focusing on transparency, monitoring and accountability at every stage of the development process.

Here, we looked at public-private partnerships in healthcare and how big data and statistical analysis can be used to measure the progression of health rights and improve their practical delivery. Second, we considered how big data, AI and smart technologies help enhance accountability of duty-bearers (those with a responsibility to respect, promote and realise human rights and to abstain from human rights violations) in relation to health rights.

Digital innovation has driven the development of ever more potent surveillance tools. Potential now exists to digitally identify faces in a crowd, trace someone’s movements through a city and mine ever-increasing quantities of personal data. Attempts are also made to use digital tools to predict where an offence may occur and who may be responsible. Once understood through the lens of privacy concerns, these new surveillance capabilities bring a range of rights-based considerations into play.

We analysed law enforcement and national security uses of such technologies in the UK, US, India, Brazil and Germany. In doing so we not only assessed the extent to which existing human rights protections require rethinking but, through our work on regulation and oversight, advanced meaningful ways in which these principles can be put into practice.

Humanitarian crises worldwide are at the centre of this theme, with us analysing how international organisations use big data to provide both protection and solutions in the short and long-term for those affected by conflict or displacement.

We investigated techniques for identifying, modelling and using contextual information to pick up potential violations of human rights that may have been manifested in social media. Then, looked closely at techniques to advance humanitarian responses through the analysis of visual imagery and text and image-based computer science to monitor human rights concerns and identify and mould relevant information from the existing social media content.