Titulinis

Lietuvos socialinių mokslų centro Teisės instituto (toliau – Instituto) mokslininkė dr. Agnė Limantė kartu su praktikante Yuliia Moskvytyn ukrainiečių teisės naujienų portale „Yur-Gazeta.com“ publikavo komentarą apie veido atpažinimo technologijos (toliau – VAT) panaudojimą karo metu. Iš Lvivo kilusi ir šiuo metu Mykolo Romerio universitete studijuojanti Yuliia praktiką Institute atlieka pagal užsienio studentų praktikas Lietuvoje finansuojančią „UPinLT“ programą.

Ukrainiečių kalba publikuotame komentare autorės visų pirma pabrėžė, jog jau nuo pirmųjų karo mėnesių ši technologija parodė neįtikėtinus rezultatus. „Ji paveikė karinių operacijų eigą ir pakeitė jų dinamiką“, – teigė Instituto atstovės. Surinkti duomenys leidžia manyti, jog dirbtiniu intelektu grįstos veido atpažinimo technologijos panaudojimas prisidėjo prie maždaug 120 tūkstančių baudžiamųjų procesų dėl rusų ir jų bendrininkų nusikaltimų Ukrainoje.

Nepaisant to, pasak straipsnio autorių, šios technologijos naudojimas kelia ir nemažai rizikų. Komentare aptariamos galimos klaidos identifikuojant asmenis, nekontroliuojamas VAT panaudojimo būdų plitimas, neautorizuotas technologijos naudojimas ir jos integracijos į ginklų sistemas aspektai. Taip pat keliamas klausimas dėl didelio kiekio technologijos sukauptų konfidencialių duomenų saugojimo, galimų asmens privatumo pažeidimų, pavyzdžiui, renkant duomenis iš socialinių tinklų. „Karo metais, – rašo autorės, – duomenų bazės buvo gerokai išplėstos gyvų ir mirusių asmenų fotografijomis, o tai jau savaime kelia daug etinių diskusijų“. Galiausiai svarstoma, kaip sukurta infrastruktūra ir įgyti gebėjimai naudojant veido atpažinimo technologiją paveiks kasdienį gyvenimą pasibaigus karui – pagerintas viešasis saugumas ar suvaržyta laisvė?

Pasak komentaro autorių, nors veido atpažinimo technologija turi didelę įtaką karinėms operacijoms Ukrainoje, negalima ignoruoti jos keliamų pavojų. Siekiant sumažinti rizikas, technologijos pateikti rezultatai neturėtų būti vienintelis pagrindas asmeniui apkaltinti. Taip pat reikėtų parengti aiškias veido atpažinimo technologijos naudojimo taisykles, užtikrinti duomenų apsaugą, kelti operatorių mokymo lygį bei kurti skaidrius kontrolės mechanizmus. Tai, autorių nuomone, padėtų sumažinti galimas grėsmes, kartu išlaikant šios naujoviškos technologijos pranašumus.

Instituto atstovių parengtą komentarą „Veido atpažinimo technologija: naudojimo karo metu rizika“ ukrainiečių kalba galima rasti here.

This year's European Society of Criminology (ESC) conference "EUROCRIM 2024" took place in Bucharest, Romania. It is the furthest eastern city to host the once-a-year event that attracts criminologists from all over the world.

On 13 September, Dr Simonas Nikartas, a researcher at the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, gave his second presentation at the Faculty of Law, University of Bucharest. This time he joined the European Society of Criminology's Working Group on Community Sanctions section on "Punishment and rehabilitation: balancing competing goals?".

In his presentation "More probation, more prisoners? Community sanctions and mass supervision in Lithuania", the researcher spoke to the audience about the ever-expanding probation supervision network in Lithuania. Although Lithuania is often known for its high number of prisoners and long prison sentences, he said, Lithuania also has one of the highest numbers of people on probation in Europe.

Dr. Nikartas discussed the reforms of recent decades to reduce the prison population and to strengthen the resocialisation of offenders. As a result, he said, the volume of probation work has increased significantly. However, these reforms create the conditions for the expansion of criminal control, and probation measures such as electronic monitoring can have a separating effect, the researcher emphasised in his paper.

The 24th annual conference of the European Society of Criminology (ESC), EUROCRIM 2024, took place in Bucharest, Romania on 11th -14th of September. It is one of the most important criminology events in Europe, attracting more than 1,500 researchers and experts from around the world. The academic environment of the University of Bucharest, where the conference took place, created a platform for lively discussions and new collaborations.

The conference covered a wide range of criminological subjects, presenting the latest research and national practices. Over the four days of the event, presentations were given on cyber and economic crime, the threats and opportunities of artificial intelligence, gender-based violence and prevention strategies, political radicalisation, the use and challenges of scientific methodologies. A separate session was devoted to a group of researchers from the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Social Science Centre (LCSS LI), researching the work of prison officers and the change in their professional role in the context of the reforms of the penitentiary system.

The results of the qualitative research carried out during the project "Changes in prison officers’ professional roles within the shifting custodial sentencing policy and practice" (PRISTA) (2023-2025) funded by the Research Council of Lithuania were presented at the session. The results reveal the internal contradictions and conflicts experienced by Lithuanian prison officers in their efforts to combine the functions of ensuring order and resocialising prisoners. The study also focuses on the recent reform of the penal system and the heritage of Lithuanian prisons - the Soviet-era punishment and post-Soviet prison cultures, which were explored in a 2015 publication by foreign scholars L. Piacentini and G. Slade.

It was this legacy and the efforts to get rid of it that were presented by Dr. Rūta Vaičiūnienė, a researcher at the LCSS LI, in the first presentation of the session. Based on qualitative research data - interviews with prison staff - she discussed the changes taking place in Lithuanian prisons in order to modernise the penal system and its impact on the staff. The speaker highlighted the changing roles and responsibilities of staff in the day-to-day work and tried to address the questions of how power dynamics are changing and why the social climate is important in the management of an institution.

In his presentation, Dr. Simonas Nikartas compared the experiences of role perceptions and internal conflicts of prison officers (2024 qualitative research data) and probation officers (2018 qualitative research data) in the context of reforms. According to the researcher, balancing the contrasting roles of rehabilitation and control due to the ongoing reforms is a challenge for officials in both institutions, as they need to adapt to changing aims, ideologies and regulations in their day-to-day roles.

In the panel session, doctoral student Liubovė Jarutienė, based on the qualitative research carried out during the project, presented her insights on the subject of the relationship between prison staff and inmates. According to the researcher, positive relations between officials and inmates are considered by foreign researchers to be one of the most important elements of the quality of prison life. During the interviews, Lithuanian prison staff identified respectful and professional communication with prisoners as one of the ways of ensuring order, as it is one of the main approaches of dynamic security. However, the researcher emphasised that this kind of interaction is often challenging for officers due to the heavy workload and the paperwork that often occupies a large part of the working day.

The session was concluded with a presentation by Dr. Artūras Tereškinas on emotions in Lithuanian prisons. Based on twenty-five semi-structured interviews with officers of the resocialization units of Lithuanian prisons, the researcher revealed how emotions are managed in these total control institutions. In his presentation, he outlined the most important emotion management strategies used by prison staff, their ability to develop emotional intelligence and to recognise and understand their emotions. Recent changes in Lithuanian prison policy and their impact on the emotional health of officers in these institutions were also discussed during the presentation.

The international conference EUROCRIM 2024 offered an opportunity to network internationally, as well as to discuss the results of the project's qualitative research and initial insights with researchers from different countries. For more information on the project "Changes in prison officers’ professional roles within the shifting custodial sentencing policy and practice" (PRISTA) implemented by the research team, visit: https://teise.org/en/projektai/prista/.

The forty-first (XXXXI) International Symposium on Economic Crime, sponsored by a wide range of international organisations and UK government agencies, took place at Jesus College, University of Cambridge.

The symposium, which has attracted more than 1800 participants from over 100 different countries in recent years, this year brought together experts and academics to share their countries' unique cases in addressing one of the greatest threats to national and international economic stability and development. The main theme of this year's conference was asset control and strategies of addressing acquisitive criminal activity and suspicious assets.

One of the world's leading universities hosted a week of presentations and discussions, during which various academics, representatives of national institutions and members of non-governmental organisations shared their theoretical and practical visions for the future, political and legal strategies, national practices, and the perspectives for improving tools to prevent economic crime.

Surrounded by researchers, judges, prosecutors, officials, and representatives of private sector organisations from various countries, Skirmantas Bikelis, a Senior Research Fellow at the LCSS Law Institute, shared the Lithuanian case - the variety of tools and strategies to prevent money laundering and confiscate suspicious assets. The researcher and the LEKOSTRA project leader shared the results of the research and discussed the mixed civil approach to suspicious assets.

More about the project led by Skirmantas Bikelis.

The 19th Conference of the European Society of International Law (ESIL) took place in Vilnius on 5-6 September 2024. The theme of this year's conference was "Technological Change and International Law".

Researchers from different countries, national and international institutions and non-governmental organisations discussed how technological progress affects international law. They also discussed extensively the issues of cybersecurity, data protection, artificial intelligence and the regulation of other emerging technologies in the context of global challenges.

The event was also attended by Dr Agnė Limantė, Senior Research Fellow at the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences. Her presentation "Facial Recognition Technology in Russia's War Against Ukraine: from Awareness Raising to Evidence before the Courts" brought together two significant subjects - technological advances and Russia's war in Ukraine.

According to A. Limantė, facial recognition technologies in Ukraine are used for counter-intelligence, identification of individuals (victims, detained soldiers and civilians) and counter-propaganda. "Although currently used only for information gathering and validation in the battlefield, in future wars it could become a weapon if integrated into the drones used in combat operations," the Institute's researcher said.

However, information gathered on the battlefield can be used for more than just military purposes. Data obtained through facial recognition technologies can become evidence in court proceedings. During the presentation, the researcher not only analysed the conditions created in Ukraine for using such data, but also discussed the emerging challenges of accuracy, privacy and ethics.

Yuliia Moskvytyn, an intern at the LCSS Law Institute (under the UPinLT internship programme) contributed to the preparation of the paper by collecting data.

The presentation is based on the publication "Faces of War: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine and Military Use of Facial Recognition Technology" by Dr. Agnė Limante, published in the book "The Cambridge Handbook of Facial Recognition in the Modern State" (eds. Rita Matulionytė and Monika Žalnieriūtė).

“Privacy, Data Protection and Data-driven Technologies” has just been published by the internationally renowned publishing house Routledge. The book aims to address the challenges posed by technology to existing data protection laws and to find balance between the development of technology and the protection of individuals’ privacy. The editors of the book, Prof. Martin Ebers and Prof. Karin Sein, colleagues at the University of Tartu, have brought together Europe’s leading scholars in law and technology for this purpose.

We are glad that one of them is Dr. Monika Žalnieriūtė, Senior Research Fellow at the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences Institute of Law. In the 12th chapter of the book “Beyond Procedural Fetishism: The Inadequacy of GDPR in Regulating Facial Recognition Technologies and Public Space Surveillance“, she examines in detail the phenomenon of procedural fetishism – focusing on procedural safeguards. In the spring, the researcher presented this topic to participants at a conference of the Lithuanian Association of Criminologists.

In the chapter, M. Žalnieriūtė discusses the rapidly expanding use of the facial recognition technologies and the inadequate regulation of the European Union‘s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). According to the author, the GDPR tends to focus on procedural safeguards in the hope that it will be sufficient to limit the powers of institutions and private businesses in relation to data protection. Finally, the researcher concludes that the need for stricter regulation of facial recognition technologies is inevitable, and that new regulations will have to be characterised by redistribution of power, redrawing boundaries and democratisation of technology companies.

The English chapter of Dr. Monika Žalnieriūtė is available here (chargeable access): https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003502791-17/beyond-procedural-fetishism-monika-zalnieriute

Zalnieriute, M. (2024). Beyond Procedural Fetishism: The Inadequacy of GDPR in Regulating Facial Recognition Technologies and Public Space Surveillance. In M. Ebers and K. Sein (Eds.), Privacy, Data Protection and Data-driven Technologies (1st ed., pp. 328–367). Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003502791-17.

Moldovos Respublikos Parlamento Socialinės apsaugos ir sveikatos komitetas kartu su tarptautiniais partneriais liepos 2 d. sukvietė įvairių organizacijų atstovus bei ekspertus į konferenciją „Narkotikų politika Moldovos Respublikoje“. Kišiniove ar nuotoliniu būdu renginyje dalyvavo šešių šalies ministerijų, įvairių valstybinių institucijų (muitinės, pasienio policijos, generalinės policijos inspekcijos, nacionalinės visuomenės sveikatos agentūros, bausmių vykdymo, probacijos bei kt.), visuomeninių organizacijų bei narkotikus vartojančių žmonių bendruomenių atstovai, nacionaliniai, regioniniai ir tarptautiniai ekspertai. Džiugu, jog tarp pastarųjų buvo ne tik buvęs Prahos (Čekija) meras dr. Pavelas Bemas, šiuo metu patarinėjantis savo šalies ministrui pirmininkui narkotikų klausimais, ar Estijos sveikatos plėtros instituto vadovė Aliona Kurbatova, bet ir Lietuvos socialinių mokslų centro Teisės instituto (toliau – LSMC TI) mokslininkas Mindaugas Lankauskas.

Konferencijoje suinteresuotosios šalys aptarė Moldovos narkotikų politikos ir žalos mažinimo temas, diskutavo dėl galiojančių teisės aktų poveikio kovai su narkotikais bei būtinų reformų poreikį. Narkotikų politika ir paslaugos, pasak renginio dalyvių, turi būti nuolat gerinamos, kad vis labiau gerbtų demokratijos ir teisinės valstybės principus bei žmogaus teises. Kartu visa tai padės žengti į priekį ir šalies integracijos į Europos Sąjungą procese.

M. Lankauskas savo pranešime „Threshold Quantities for Illicit Drugs: Understanding Lithuania’s Legal Framework for Drug Offenses“ (liet. Neteisėtų narkotikų kiekių slenksčiai: kaip suprasti Lietuvos teisinį reguliavimą dėl su narkotikais susijusių nusikaltimų) pagrindinį dėmesį skyrė narkotinių ir psichotropinių medžiagų kiekio nustatymo teisiniam reguliavimui Lietuvoje aptarti.

„Lietuvoje, – susirinkusiesiems kalbėjo mokslininkas, – baudžiamoji atsakomybė dėl neteisėto disponavimo narkotinėmis ir psichotropinėmis medžiagomis priklauso ne nuo jos rūšies, o nuo konkrečios kontroliuojamos medžiagos kiekio. Narkotikų vartojimas užtraukia administracinę atsakomybę, disponavimas nedideliu kiekiu – baudžiamasis nusižengimas, o disponavimas didesniais kiekiais ar platinimas yra nusikaltimai, už kuriuos yra numatytos griežtos bausmės.“

Pabaigoje LSMC TI mokslininkas pristatė Lietuvos reguliavimą, kai nustatomas grynasis narkotinių ir psichotropinių medžiagų kiekis. Moldova, kurioje šiuo metu baudžiama už bendrą narkotinių ir psichotropinių medžiagų kiekį, netiriant jų sudėties ar koncentracijos, svarsto ateityje įvesti panašų į Lietuvos modelį.

Renginį bendrai organizavo bei palaikė Eurazijos žalos mažinimo asociacija, Jungtinių Tautų narkotikų kontrolės ir nusikalstamumo prevencijos biuras (angl. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC), Jungtinės Jungtinių Tautų ŽIV/AIDS programos (angl. Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids, UNAIDS) atstovai bei kitos visuomeninės Moldovos organizacijos.

Norintys narkotikų reguliavimo politikos klausimais sužinoti daugiau, gali susipažinti su dr. M. Lankausko neseniai žurnale „Kriminologijos studijos“ publikuotu straipsniu „Kaip sveria narkotikus Temidės svarstyklės? Kai kurių narkotinių ir psichotropinių medžiagų kiekių nustatymo teisinio reguliavimo ypatumai Lietuvoje“.

On 31st May, when the forces of nature were battling outside the window over which of them would scare the city’s residents and visitors more, the participants of a discussion held on the occasion of the Lithuanian Criminologists’ Day in the auditorium of Vilnius University’s Faculty of Philosophy engaged the audience in a struggle of ideas about trust in justice. The theme of this year’s discussion, which has become a tradition of the Lithuanian Association of Criminologists, was “Trust in Justice: What do we Expect from Criminology?”.

The discussion, moderated by Dr Eglė Vileikienė, representative of the Ministry of the Interior, was attended by both criminology academics and practitioners - representatives of the police and the judiciary system. Skirmantas Bikelis, a researcher at the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, also shared his insights.

The discussion and the Q&A session focused on how and why trust in law enforcement and judiciary system is changing. For example, why has trust in the Lithuanian police increased significantly over the last decade, while the public security situation has not changed much? The participants exchanged quite different views on whether the courts should invest in their image and improve communication with the public by explaining their decisions that are not understood by all, and whether the involvement of judges in communication with the public limits their independence?

Finally, ideas were shared on how criminological knowledge could contribute to the development of science-based law enforcement practice. Dr S. Bikelis pointed out that in the current trend of increasing recognition of the importance of circumstantial evidence and the context of a case in the process of evidence discovery and assessment, criminological knowledge is becoming more important than ever for law enforcement officials and judges.

On May 22, the annual “IQ Forum” took place at the Public Library of Marijampolė named after Petras Kriaučiūnas. This traditional event is organized for the business community of Sūduva by the magazine “IQ” and the Marijampolė branch of the Kaunas Chamber of Commerce, Industry, and Crafts. Representatives from businesses and non-governmental organizations, as well as the mayor and vice mayor of Marijampolė, and several members of the Lithuanian Parliament and Marijampolė Municipal Council attended this year’s forum titled “Sūduva 2024: How Can Regions Catch the Wave of Success?”

Among the honourable speakers at the event was Monika Šukytė, a PhD student at the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences (hereinafter - LI LCSS) and a junior researcher in the project “Artificial Intelligence in Courts: Challenges and Opportunities” (TeismAI). In her presentation “Artificial Intelligence in State Institutions: Towards Technology Adoption”, she discussed how artificial intelligence is used in police and the judiciary, and also the challenges this technology poses in the context of human rights.

In the first part of her presentation, drawing on the results of the recently completed LI LCSS project “Government Use of Facial Recognition Technologies: Legal Challenges and Solutions” (Faces-AI) and her doctoral research, M. Šukytė spoke about the use of facial recognition technology (hereinafter - FRT) in police activities. She explained the operating principles of these technologies and provided practical examples of their use in law enforcement agencies in Lithuania and other countries. At the end of her presentation, she also highlighted the challenges that the use of FRT poses to human rights, such as the right to data protection and privacy.

The second part of her presentation was based on preliminary results from the project “Artificial Intelligence in Courts: Challenges and Opportunities” (TeismAI), funded by the Lithuanian Research Council. This part focused on the use of artificial intelligence tools in the judiciary. “Generative artificial intelligence, such as the chatbot ChatGPT,” M. Šukytė explained to the forum participants, “has already been applied in preparing procedural documents and deepfakes have already reached courts as evidence.” She concluded her presentation by discussing the challenges arising in the context of human rights and judicial values, including issues of algorithmic bias, the right to an impartial trial, and the question of accountability for errors made by algorithms.

The slides from Monika Šukytė’s presentation can be accessed here.