Lords to explore algorithmic tools for law enforcement
Monday 6 September 2021
The House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee will tomorrow be drawing international comparisons in the use of algorithmic tools for law enforcement, as it questions experts from across the globe for its inquiry into new technologies and the application of the law.
The committee will seek to explore the use of advanced algorithmic tools in activities to discover, deter, rehabilitate, or punish people who breach the law.
Witnesses will discuss how algorithmic tools for law enforcement are deployed in their countries and where this has been particularly successful - or otherwise.
The hybrid session will take place on Tuesday 7 September at 10.00am and can be followed on Parliament TV.
Giving evidence will be:
- Professor Elizabeth Joh, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law, University of California, Davis;
- Professor Colin Gavaghan, Chair of the Advisory Panel on emergent technologies at New Zealand Police and Director of the New Zealand Foundation Centre for Law and Policy in Emerging Technologies, University of Otago;
- Professor Rosamunde Elise Van Brakel, Research Professor in Surveillance Studies at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, Belgium and Co-director of the Surveillance Studies Network.
Questions the committee is likely to ask include:
- How are advanced technologies being used for the application of the law in Belgium, New-Zealand, and the United States of America?
- How has the use of advanced technologies for the application of the law evolved over time in your respective countries? Is the overall trend towards the upscaling or descaling of capabilities?
- What do you view as the most appropriate sphere of government at which to regulate the use of advanced technologies for the application of the law: local, national, regional, or global?
- What transparency mechanisms are in place in your respective countries, and how successful are they?
- Have you come across examples from your respective jurisdictions in which human-machine interaction has been particularly problematic or particularly successful?
- Seen from abroad, is anything particularly noteworthy about the way advanced technologies are being used (or not used), for the application of the law in England and Wales?
