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jc2106@cam.ac.uk

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Assistant Professor in Law and Technology

Interests

I'm generally interested in critical, interdisciplinary work on questions of power, political economy, and the law around internet platforms and informational capitalism, technological supply chains and infrastructures, and AI and automated decision-making. I am particularly interested in law’s role in informational capitalism, how legal frameworks (such as data protection) intersect with complex technological systems and with tech industry business models, and how law can better address these questions to more effectively regulate digital technologies in future. 

CV / Biography

I am Assistant Professor in Law and Technology in the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge, where I'm Deputy Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law and a Fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. I'm also a member of the Microsoft Cloud Computing Research Centre, and a Research Affiliate of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy. Before joining the Law Faculty, I was a Senior Research Associate in the Computer Science Department at Cambridge as part of the Compliant & Accountable Systems research group. I hold a PhD in Law and an LLM in Law and Governance from Queen’s University, Belfast. For my PhD, I studied the use of machine learning in commercial and state internet surveillance, and the impact of these related forms of surveillance on people and society. 

For the 2023-24 academic year, I am convening the LLM paper 'Law, Technology & Society', and will also lecture on the LLM paper 'Personal Information Law' as well as the undergraduate constitutional law paper.

I am open to supervising PhDs on topics related to law and the political economy of informational capitalism, particularly around cloud computing, AI and automated decision-making, data and data governance, and platform governance. Emails from prospective students wanting to work on topics related to crypto, blockchain, IP, or AI in legal practice or the legal system will be ignored.

Publications

 

Articles

"Understanding accountability in algorithmic supply chains" 2023 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FAccT '23)

Co-Author/s:
Jennifer Cobbe, Michael Veale, and Jatinder Singh
Citation:
2023 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FAccT '23)
DOI:
10.1145/3593013.3594073
Published: Jun 2023

"Out of Context: Algorithmic Fairness in “Artificial Intelligence as a Service”" 2023 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM CHI '23)

Co-Author/s:
Kornel Lewicki, Michelle Seng Ah Lee, Jennifer Cobbe, and Jatinder Singh
Citation:
2023 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM CHI '23)
DOI:
10.1145/3544548.3581463
Published: Apr 2023

"Disclosure by Design: Document engineering for meaningful data disclosures" 2022 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FAccT '22)

Co-Author/s:
Chris Norval, Jennifer Cobbe, Kristin Cornelius, and Jatinder Singh
Citation:
2022 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FAccT '22)
DOI:
10.1145/3531146.3533133
Published: Jun 2022

"From Transparency to Accountability of Intelligent Systems – moving beyond aspirations" (2022) Data and Policy 4

Co-Author/s:
Rebecca Williams, Richard Cloete, Jennifer Cobbe, Caitlin Cottrill, Peter Edwards, Milan Markovic, Iman Naja, Frances Ryan, Jatinder Singh, and Pang Wei
Citation:
(2022) Data and Policy 4
DOI:
10.1017/dap.2021.37
Published: Feb 2022

"Algorithmic Censorship by Social Platforms: Power and Resistance" (2021) Philosophy & Technology 34

Co-Author/s:
Jennifer Cobbe
Citation:
(2021) Philosophy & Technology 34
DOI:
10.1007/s13347-020-00429-0
Published: Sep 2021

"Artificial Intelligence as a Service: Legal Responsibilities, Liabilities, and Policy Challenges" (2021) Computer Law & Security Review 42

Co-Author/s:
Jennifer Cobbe and Jatinder Singh
Citation:
(2021) Computer Law & Security Review 42
DOI:
10.1016/j.clsr.2021.105573
Published: May 2021

"Data Protection and Tech Startups: The Need for Attention, Support, and Scrutiny" (2021) Policy & Internet

Co-Author/s:
Chris Norval, Heleen Janssen, Jennifer Cobbe, and Jatinder Singh
Citation:
(2021) Policy & Internet
DOI:
10.1002/poi3.255
Published: May 2021

"Differential Tweetment: Mitigating Racial Dialect Bias in Harmful Tweet Detection" 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FAccT '21)

Co-Author/s:
Ari Ball-Burack, Michelle Seng Ah Lee, Jennifer Cobbe, and Jatinder Singh
Citation:
2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FAccT '21)
DOI:
10.1145/3442188.3445875
Published: Mar 2021

"Principles for the Socially Responsible Use of Conservation Monitoring Technology and Data" (2021) Conservation Science and Practice

Co-Author/s:
Chris Sandbrook, Doug Clark, Tuuli Toivonen, Trishant Simlai, Stephanie O’Donnell, Jennifer Cobbe, and William Adams
Citation:
(2021) Conservation Science and Practice
DOI:
10.1111/csp2.374
Published: Mar 2021

"Reviewable Automated Decision-Making: A Framework for Accountable Algorithmic Systems" 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FAccT '21)

Co-Author/s:
Jennifer Cobbe, Michelle Seng Ah Lee, and Jatinder Singh
Citation:
2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FAccT '21)
DOI:
10.1145/3442188.3445921
Published: Mar 2021

"Enclaves in the Clouds: Legal Considerations and Broader Implications" (2021) ACM Queue 18(6)

Co-Author/s:
Jatinder Singh, Jennifer Cobbe, Do Le Quoc, and Zahra Tarkhani
Citation:
(2021) ACM Queue 18(6)
DOI:
10.1145/3442632.3448126
Published: Jan 2021

"Personal information management systems: a user-centric privacy utopia?" (2020) Internet Policy Review 9(4)

Co-Author/s:
Heleen Janssen, Jennifer Cobbe, and Jatinder Singh
Citation:
(2020) Internet Policy Review 9(4)
DOI:
10.14763/2020.4.1536
Published: Dec 2020

"Decentralised Data Processing: Personal Data Stores and the GDPR" (2020) International Data Privacy Law 10(4)

Co-Author/s:
Heleen Janssen, Jennifer Cobbe, Chris Norval, and Jatinder Singh
Citation:
(2020) International Data Privacy Law 10(4)
DOI:
10.1093/idpl/ipaa016
Published: Nov 2020

"Reviewable Automated Decision-Making" (2020) Computer Law & Security Review

Co-Author/s:
Jennifer Cobbe and Jatinder Singh
Citation:
(2020) Computer Law & Security Review
DOI:
10.1016/j.clsr.2020.105475
Published: Nov 2020

"Centring the Rule of Law in the Digital State" (2020) IEEE Computer 53

Co-Author/s:
Jennifer Cobbe, Michelle Seng Ah Lee, Heleen Janssen, and Jatinder Singh
Citation:
(2020) IEEE Computer 53
DOI:
10.1109/MC.2020.3006623
Published: Oct 2020

"What Lies Beneath: Transparency in Online Services Supply Chains" (2020) Journal of Cyber Policy

Co-Author/s:
Jennifer Cobbe, Chris Norval, and Jatinder Singh
Citation:
(2020) Journal of Cyber Policy
DOI:
10.1080/23738871.2020.1745860
Published: Apr 2020

"Monitoring Misuse for Accountable ‘Artificial Intelligence as a Service'" 2020 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES '20)

Co-Author/s:
Seyyed Ahmad Javadi, Richard Cloete, Jennifer Cobbe, Michelle Seng Ah Lee and Jatinder Singh
Citation:
2020 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES '20)
DOI:
10.1145/3375627.3375873
Published: Feb 2020

"Consequences for Manufacturing Transparency? Facebook, Twitter and the German Network Enforcement Act" 2020 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAT* '20)

Co-Author/s:
Ben Wagner, Krisztina Rozgonyi, Marie-Therese Sekwenz, Jatinder Singh, and Jennifer Cobbe
Citation:
2020 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAT* '20)
DOI:
10.1145/3351095.3372856
Published: Jan 2020

"Regulating Recommending: Motivations, Considerations, and Principles" (2019) European Journal of Law & Technology

Co-Author/s:
Jennifer Cobbe and Jatinder Singh
Citation:
(2019) European Journal of Law & Technology
Published: Dec 2019

"The Security Implications of Data Subject Rights" (2019) IEEE Security & Privacy 17(6)

Co-Author/s:
Jatinder Singh and Jennifer Cobbe
Citation:
(2019) IEEE Security & Privacy 17(6)
DOI:
10.1109/MSEC.2019.2914614
Published: Dec 2019

"Administrative Law and the Machines of Government: Judicial Review of Automated Public-Sector Decision-Making" (2019) Legal Studies 39

Co-Author/s:
Jennifer Cobbe
Citation:
(2019) Legal Studies 39
DOI:
10.1017/lst.2019.9
Published: Jul 2019

"Decision Provenance: Harnessing data flow for accountable systems" (2019) IEEE Access 7

Co-Author/s:
Jatinder Singh, Jennifer Cobbe, and Chris Norval
Citation:
(2019) IEEE Access 7
DOI:
10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2887201
Published: Dec 2018

"Reclaiming Data: Overcoming App Identification Barriers for Exercising Data Protection Rights" Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Legal and Technical Issues in Cloud and Pervasive Computing (IoT) [CLaw-18], UbiComp/ISWC’18 Adjunct

Co-Author/s:
Chris Norval, Jennifer Cobbe, Heleen Janssen, and Jatinder Singh
Citation:
Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Legal and Technical Issues in Cloud and Pervasive Computing (IoT) [CLaw-18], UbiComp/ISWC’18 Adjunct
DOI:
10.1145/3267305.3274153
Published: Oct 2018

"Accountability in the IoT: Systems, Law, and Ways Forward" (2018) IEEE Computer 51(7)

Co-Author/s:
Jatinder Singh, Christopher Millard, Chris Reed, Jennifer Cobbe, and Jon Crowcroft
Citation:
(2018) IEEE Computer 51(7)
DOI:
10.1109/MC.2018.3011052
Published: Jul 2018

"Casting the Dragnet: Communications Data Retention Under the Investigatory Powers Act" (2018) Public Law

Co-Author/s:
Jennifer Cobbe
Citation:
(2018) Public Law
Published: Jan 2018

Book Chapters

"Defining the scope of AI ADM system risk assessment" (with Michelle Seng Ah Lee, Jennifer Cobbe, Heleen Janssen, and Jatinder Singh ) in Eleni Kosta, Ronald Leenes, and Irene Kamara (ed(s)), Research Handbook on EU Data Protection Law (Elgar, 2022)

"Towards an accountable Internet of Things: A call for ‘reviewability’" (with Chris Norval and Jatinder Singh) in Andrew Crabtree, Richard Mortier, and Hamed Haddadi (ed(s)), Privacy by Design for the Internet of Things: Building Accountability and Security (Institute of Engineering and Technology, 2021)

Co-Author/s:
Chris Norval, Jennifer Cobbe, and Jatinder Singh
Published Oct 2021

"Legal Singularity and the Reflexivity of Law" in Simon Deakin and Christopher Markou (ed(s)), Is Law Computable? Critical Perspectives on Law & Artificial Intelligence (Hart, 2020)

"Understanding the Smart City: Framing the challenges for law and good governance" (with John Morison) in Emmanuel Slautsky (ed(s)), The Conclusions of the Chaire Mutations de l'Action Publique et du Droit Public, Sciences Po , 2019)

Published Jul 2019