Faculty of Law Disserations

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Browsing Faculty of Law Disserations by Author "Brittain, Dr. Stephen"

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    Blockchain: A European Perspective on the compatibility in regards with General Data Protection Regulation
    (Griffith College, 2022) Raghuram Iyer, Radhika
    The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the compatibility between Blockchain technology with the General Data Protection regulation (GDPR). The GDPR was adopted in May 2018 across all the European Union member nations with the intention of harmonising the data protection regulations throughout Europe. The GDPR established numerous basic rights and privileges for individuals in terms of protecting their personal data. That alone implies that the relevant stakeholders who process personal data undertake specific duties. The legislation, although is predicated on the assumption that data is maintained and processed in a centralised architecture. This creates a problem for distributed networks, the core technology of blockchain. The blockchain technology is utilised to safeguard and maintain the integrity of the personal data in a potentially dangerous technological world. Typically, the peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, also known as shared networks, have confronted the challenge of assuring data integrity. This dissertation explores whether the GDPR is relevant to a decentralised architecture and if the essential rights and principles of the regulation can be preserved, which is to say whether the involved authorities can perform their regulatory tasks.
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    Misinformation in a Digital Age: A Comparative Analysis of how Legislation in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Hungary and the USA is Dealing with False Online Information
    (Griffith, 2022) O’Malley, Fiona
    In this dissertation it was shown how damaging online misinformation can be and the different jurisdictional legal instruments employed examine misinformation in a digital age – what misinformation is; the different legal and policy instruments used to reduce misinformation in the EU, the UK and America; the difficulties in identifying and tackling misinformation, and potential solutions to tackle misinformation on social media and on the internet. This dissertation examined the strengths and weaknesses of each piece of legislation and the difficulties in tackling misinformation. Issues identified included the violation of human rights in any censorship model, the problems of appointing a censor, including bias, incorrect censoring and abuse of power. The author acknowledges that disinformation and misinformation has hugely negative implications but emphasises the need for academic freedom and dissenting views for the sake of innovation and scientific breakthroughs. The author also identified many examples of dismissing or censoring statements that subsequently turned out to be true. The conclusions drawn from this dissertation were that there were many methods available for the tech giants to reduce online misinformation, but that these methods should be used only when statements are obviously and objectively untrue and harmful, rather than enforcing a draconian regime that ultimately restricts truth.
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    Pre-emptive Strike: an examination of International Law on the use of force
    (Griffith, 2022) D. Woods-Panzaru, Simon
    In this dissertation it was shown that until the emergence of the Bush Doctrine, Customary International Law and the Charter made up the framework for determining when the use of force was legal. The inherent right of a valid self-defence was embedded in customary international law in particular the Caroline case. Since 1945 and with the happenings of 9/11, warfare has taken on new directions which impact world peace and global security today. The Bush Doctrine responded to these changes taking on pre-emptive strike to include preventive and anticipatory use of force as an option against non-conventional warfare such as terrorism, WMD and cyberattacks in the absence of an imminent attack. The academic questions debated on preventive or anticipatory self-defence centred on whether the current law governing self-defence was able to deal with evolving modern warfare. This analysis examined under what circumstances and authority could a state use preventive and anticipatory self-defences notwithstanding the controversies surrounding them. The aim and objective of the research was to understand the law under the Charter, Customary International Law and if the Bush Doctrine held any legitimacy for the extension of pre-emptive use of force. The results of the research showed that the UN Charter and Customary International law remain the foundations to determine when the use of force as a self-defence was legal. It also confirmed that the law cannot remain static to the changes happening in modern warfare. The research illustrated that extending pre-emptive strike to include preventive and anticipatory strikes caused uncertainty in the law. The conclusions in this study suggested it was essential to update Charter and Customary International Law with definitions of armed and imminent attacks by incorporating non-conventional warfare activities into the definitions, to re-examine the veto power of permanent members of the Security Council especially when a permanent member is involved in use of force against another state and that evidentiary standards need to incorporate non-conventional warfare so that the state having burden of proof was aware of the intelligence needed.