CHAPTER 7. Law and “Smart” Technologies
Susan W. Brenner · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2009
Abstract This chapter explains why our relationship with technology will move from use to interaction. It also explains why the approach we have relied upon to control misuse then becomes unsuitable. It offers an alternative approach for controlling misuse, and demonstrates how it addresses the problem. Law has not realized there must be two types of rules: rules about technology and rules about human behavior (which may or may not involve technology). Law tends to conflate the two. This is the result of expediency and history, and must be revised. The chapter explains that this approach also influenced the procedural rules that govern what law enforcement can, and cannot, do in investigative criminal activity. Finally, it explains that the approach it advocates applies with equal validity outside the criminal context — to civil rules, such as tort rules, that are also about human behavior.