All issues > Volume 18 > Issue 1 > Editorial

Welcome to the autumn issue of the eighteenth volume of SCRIPTed. The ongoing pandemic left nothing unaffected, including the way we work, communicate, and even publish. As the new editorial board, we took over the editorial administration of SCRIPTed in times of uncertainty, but as always, great teamwork has paid off.  This issue is the product of those who have given their time and effort by reviewing all the submissions we received including those that did not end up being published. We would like to thank all the reviewers, contributing authors and the supervising, student, technical, and copy editor teams of SCRIPTed. In this issue, we are pleased to introduce two peer-reviewed articles together with one analysis piece.

The first article of our issue is written by Alexander Bernier and Bartha Knoppers. They discuss interpretative ambiguities in standards used to differentiate personal data from non-personal data. With this purpose, Bernier and Knoppers discuss how conceptions of “re-identification risk”, “personal identifier”, and “personal relation” distinguish identifiability metrics in Canada and the EU and make a comparative analysis. The article then considers how potential threats to personal privacy, such as algorithmic decision-making and individual profiling, do not necessitate the use of demonstrably identifiable data. Finally, they present a survey of emergent quantitative methodologies that are being used to evaluate data identifiability and measure potential privacy threats in the health sector.

Our second article is written by Marc Mölders and casts doubt on the assumption that the spreading use of algorithms within courts serves as a clear case in terms of solutionism. Mölders offers thematic analysis of the application of two of the leading recidivism score algorithms, COMPAS and the PSA. Both may cause distinct kinds of problems after they have been launched: fairness problems created by COMPAS and appropriate usage problems created by the PSA. His examinations call for careful attention to be paid to whether current attempts at making the world a better place put technology directly in charge.

This issue also presents a critical analysis by Andrew Cormack on the European Commission’s proposal to update one of the Directives on cybersecurity across the EU: The Network and Information Security Directive. Cormack examines how defenders share network and information security information, how some GDPR provisions are applied currently, and what the proposed Directive might offer.

We hope that our readers will enjoy reading the autumn issue of SCRIPTed as much as we have.

Ayça, Robbie, Şimal Efsane