Human Rights in the Big Data World
- Francis Kuriakose,
- Deepa Iyer
Abstract
Ethical approach to human rights conceives and evaluates law through the
underlying value concerns. This paper examines human rights after the
introduction of big data using an ethical approach to rights. First, the
central value concerns such as equity, equality, sustainability and
security are derived from the history of digital technological
revolution. Then, the properties and characteristics of big data are
analyzed to understand emerging value concerns such as accountability,
transparency, tracability, explainability and disprovability. Using
these value points, this paper argues that big data calls for two types
of evaluations regarding human rights. The first is the reassessment of
existing human rights in the digital sphere predominantly through right
to equality and right to work. The second is the conceptualization of
new digital rights such as right to privacy and right against
propensity-based discrimination. The paper concludes that as we
increasingly share the world with intelligence systems, these new values
expand and modify the existing human rights paradigm.