Virtuality and Capabilities in a World of Ambient Intelligence - New Challenges to Privacy and Data Protection

This book is about power and freedoms in our technological world and has two main objectives. The first is to demonstrate that a theoretical exploration of the algorithmic governmentality hypothesis combined with the capability approach is useful for a better understanding of power and freedoms in Ambient Intelligence, a world where information and communication technologies are invisible, interconnected, context aware, personalized, adaptive to humans and act autonomously. The second is to argue that these theories are useful for a better comprehension of privacy and data protection concepts and the evolution of their regulation. Having these objectives in mind, the book outlines a number of theses based on two threads: first, the elimination of the social effects of uncertainty and the risks to freedoms and, second, the vindication of rights. Inspired by and building on the outcomes of different philosophical and legal approaches, this book embodies an effort to better understand the challenges posed by Ambient Intelligence technologies, opening paths for more effective realization of rights and rooting legal norms in the preservation of the potentiality of human capabilities.


Luiz Costa is a researcher specialized in information technology law. He holds a masters degree from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and a ph.d. from the University of Namur. His main research interests are related to human rights and emerging technologies, particularly from a philosophical and legal point of view. Since 2016 he has been a fellow at the Research Centre in Information, Law and Society (crids). He also has 14 years' experience as a federal prosecutor in Brazil.