Profiling the mobile customer – Is industry self-regulation adequate to protect consumer privacy when behavioural advertisers target mobile phones? – Part II

Mobile customers are increasingly being tracked and profiled by behavioural advertisers to enhance delivery of personalized advertising. This type of profiling relies on automated processes that mine databases containing personally-identifying or anonymous consumer data, and it raises a host of significant concerns about privacy and data protection. This second article in a two part series on “Profiling the Mobile Customer” explores how to best protect consumers’ privacy and personal data through available mechanisms that include industry self-regulation, privacy-enhancing technologies and legislative reform.¹ It discusses how well privacy and personal data concerns related to consumer profiling are addressed by two leading industry self-regulatory codes from the UK and the U.S. that aim to establish fair information practices for behavioural advertising by their member companies. It also discusses the current limitations of using technology to protect consumers from privacy abuses related to profiling. Concluding that industry self-regulation and available privacy-enhancing technologies will not be adequate to close important privacy gaps related to consumer profiling without legislative reform, it offers suggestions for EU and U.S. regulators about how to do this.²     

Rechtsprechung – WEG

Rechtsprechung

Rechtsprechung – WEG     

Sexsomnia – a forensic psychiatric challenge – a case report

In rare penal cases, a defendant makes a claim that he or she was asleep at the time of an alleged crime. This article discusses a case of alleged sexsomnia where a man claimed that he had been asleep during a sexual encounter (rape) with a woman. The question that often arises during an investigation and in court is how complex a behaviour is someone able to perform and still be asleep? To assist the court in answering this question, forensic psychiatric experts may be appointed. But the experts were not present during the act and must therefore consider each case on the basis of the available information and existing research. This paper provides a brief overview of the research regarding sexsomnia. It will also discuss what kind of information is important to elaborate in these cases in order to clarify the premises for the experts’ conclusions to the court.     

Practicability of the mobile one-finger scanner Cross Match MV5 in fingerprinting of corpses: are mobile fingerprinting scanners suitable for use in mass disasters?

Dactyloscopy is a special field in the police records department and a suitable means for identifying unknown dead persons as well as solving crimes by taking fingerprints from living persons. Apart from the conventional methods of dactyloscopy, mobile and more compact instruments are to facilitate taking prints of fingertips and palms also at the scene of mass disasters. In the presented study, living persons and corpses were examined to find out the possible uses and limits of mobile one-finger scanners. The concrete issue of the investigation was whether the mobile one-finger scanner Cross Match MV5 is suitable for application in mass disasters. The device was used in 12 corpses aged 5 weeks to 76 years (mean postmortem interval 5.5 days) and in 28 living persons aged 6 weeks to 87 years. In summary, the scanner produced qualitatively good prints in all age groups of the living individuals. In the corpses, the prints were only partly evaluable. In particular, fingers and fingertips with soot blackening and livid discoloration were difficult to analyse. Postmortem rigidity also complicated the handling of the scanner. In fresh corpses, the scanner can be recommended without reservation. Even if the epidermis was detached, the scanner was able to produce evaluable prints of the dermis of the hypothenar.     

Traunkirchen 2012 – Seminarankündigung; Salzburger Juristische Gesellschaft – Weiteres Programm Sommersemester 2012; Walter-Haslinger-Preis – Ausschreibung

Aus den Vereinen/Ankündigungen

Traunkirchen 2012 – Seminarankündigung; Salzburger Juristische Gesellschaft – Weiteres Programm Sommersemester 2012; Walter-Haslinger-Preis – Ausschreibung     

Kommanditgesellschaft – Mietzinsanhebung, Anzeige

Bei einer KG ist idR eine entscheidende ?nderung der rechtlichen und wirtschaftlichen Einflussm?glichkeiten anzunehmen, wenn der pers?nlich haftende Gesellschafter ausgetauscht wird oder sich die Beteiligungsverh?ltnisse bei den kraft Gesetzes gesch?ftsführungsbefugten Komplement?ren entscheidend verschieben. Die Anzeige nach § 12a Abs 3 MRG ist an keine Form gebunden. Sie soll dem Vermieter die zuverl?ssige Beurteilung erm?glichen, ob eine entscheidende ?nderung der rechtlichen und wirtschaftlichen Einflussm?glichkeiten stattfand. Die ?u?erung "das Gesch?ft habe die Jugend übernommen" erfüllt diese Anforderung nicht. Im Fall einer Pauschalmietzinsvereinbarung setzt eine Mietzinsanhebung nach § 12a MRG keinen Aufspaltungsantrag nach § 15 Abs 4 MRG voraus.     

Ober?sterreichische Juristische Gesellschaft – Weiteres Programm Sommersemester 2012 – Ankündigung

Aus den Vereinen / Ankündigungen

Ober?sterreichische Juristische Gesellschaft – Weiteres Programm Sommersemester 2012 – Ankündigung     

Electronic identities – public or private

In the real world, we usually identify persons by their appearance, voice, and so on. If this is not sufficient, identity cards are used. In the virtual world the situation is different. The basic concepts of the internet provide for unique identification of devices, not of their users. Hence, some kind of identity management system is required, which can be provided either by the state or by the private sector. Official electronic identity schemes, such as the Austrian Citizen Card, are being established in more and more countries. The carrier media of the Citizen Card is a smart card but, since 2009, the mobile phone signature is offered as a more comfortable alternative. However, much more widespread than that are simple user accounts with passwords, one for each individual service. This system has significant flaws. A solution can be provided by the concept of identity federation: an ‘identity ecosystem’ can be established in which a user can choose among several identity providers, authorise them to identify him towards service providers, authorise attribute providers to provide particular qualified user information to a service provider, etc. In this paper the different concepts mentioned above are elaborated and their interrelations and legal difficulties are described.     

Law Like Poetry – Burnt Norton

Poetry and law are usually cast in opposition but there is a little regarded dimension of responsiveness in law which would incline them towards similarity. The opposition and the similarity are amplified in various instances. Then similarity is affirmed in an involvement in the first of T.S. Eliot'sFour Quartets, ``Burnt Norton'. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Zinsminderung – Leerstehungen in einem Einkaufszentrum

Bei einem Bestandvertrag in einem Einkaufszentrum k?nnen umfangreiche Leerstehungen Anlass für eine Mietzinsreduktion sein, dies gilt auch für sog multifunktionale Zentren. Allerdings kann ein bestimmter Prozentsatz an Leerstehungen, ab dem Zinsminderungsansprüche bejaht werden k?nnen, nicht festgesetzt werden, weil die Verletzung des bedungenen Gebrauchs eines Bestandobjektes immer von den Umst?nden des Einzelfalles abh?ngt.     

Transnational constitutionalism – conflicts-law constitutionalism – economic constitutionalism: the exemplary case of the European Union

Transnational constitutionalism is both a sociological given and a legal challenge. We observe the emergence of ever more legally framed transnational arrangements with ever more power and impact. Do such arrangements deserve to be called legitimate rule in Habermasian terms? Is it at all conceivable that the proprium of law can be defended against the rise of its informal competitors? This article opts for a third way that listens to neither the siren songs on law beyond the state nor to the defences of nation-state constitutionalism as the monopolist of legitimate rule. The proposed alternative suggests that transnational legal ordering of the European Union should build on its reconceptualization as a ‘three-dimensional conflicts law’ with a democracy-enhancing potential. This reconceptualization operationalizes the ‘united in diversity’ motto of the Draft Constitutional Treaty of 2004, preserves the essential accomplishments of Europe's constitutional democracies, provides for co-operative problem solving of transnational regulatory tasks, and retains supervisory powers over national and transnational arrangements of private governance.     

Digital identity – The legal person?

This paper examines the concept of digital identity which the author asserts is now evident in the United Kingdom as a consequence of the Identity Cards Act (UK) 2006 and the National Identity Scheme it establishes. The nature and functions of the concept, particularly the set of information which constitutes an individual's transactional identity, are examined. The paper then considers the central question of who, or what, is the legal person in a transaction i.e. who or what enters into legal relations. The analysis presents some intriguing results which were almost certainly not envisaged by the legislature. The implications extend beyond the United Kingdom to similar schemes in other jurisdictions, and to countries, like Australia, which may implement such a scheme.     

Rendition/Eviction – A Post-Apartheid Reflection

The article analyzes the internal logic of the conceptual and structural hierarchies involved in slavery and apartheid land law. The rendition or recovery of fugitive slaves and the eviction of squatters from land during apartheid both involve the use of legal procedures and institutions to protect property interests. However, in the period following the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of apartheid, this logic was not abandoned – liberty was acquired at the price of economic subjugation. The new forms of slavery will continue unless the abolition of slavery and the termination of apartheid are explicitly celebrated as political acts that replace the urge to dominate and possess with a measure of public-spiritedness and non-possessiveness. Politics can be kept alive only when the compelling logic of domination and hierarchy is resisted through a different, public-spirited rendition of eviction.Paper read at the Critical Legal Conference 2003, entitled Transition and Transformation; Resistances and Reconciliation; Communities Within and Beyond Law, Johannesburg, 5–7 September 2003. Thanks to Gerhard du Toit and Maartje Eefting for research assistance. Peter Fitzpatrick (No Higher Duty: Mabo and the Failure of Legal Foundation, Law & Critique, 13 (2002), 233–252) and Frank I. Michelman (The Bill of Rights, the Common Law, and the Freedom-Friendly State, paper read at the University of Miami, 21–22 March 2003, published version forthcoming) inspired some of the ideas worked out here. Thanks to Frank Michelman for permission to refer to his unpublished article, and for helpful comments on a draft of this article.     

Zuständigkeit – Schadenersatzbegehren eines Mitbewohners

Das vertraglich einger?umte (entgeltliche) Nutzungsrecht an einer Wohnung ist ein Mietvertrag iSd § 49 Abs 2 Z 5 JN. Dieser Zust?ndigkeitstatbestand erfasst auch Schadenersatzansprüche aus Verletzung vertraglicher Schutzpflichten des Bestandgebers, setzt aber einen Rechtsstreit zwischen den Parteien des Bestandvertrages voraus; er gilt nicht für eine Klage eines Mitbewohners.