Daniel J. Solove, Professor of Intellectual Property and Technology Law at the George Washington University Law School - and one of the global thought leaders on privacy matters - and Hideyuki Matsumi, a doctoral researcher of the Law, Science, Technology and Society Research Group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (LSTS), have co-authored the paper ‘The Prediction Society: Algorithms and the Problems of Forecasting the Future’.

In their paper they state that algorithmic predictions are types of inferences that current privacy and data protection laws fail to adequately address. They argue that the use of algorithmic predictions is a distinct issue warranting different treatment from other types of inference and they further examine the issues laws must consider when addressing the problems of algorithmic predictions.

Hildebrandt’s review of their paper, entitled ‘Addressing the Modern Shamanism of Predictive Inferences’, points out that while some of their points have been previously made, for example in ‘Profiling the European Citizen‘, their paper holds great promise and their lucid narrative argumentation could spark a new conversation in the US as to how legislatures and courts should approach the issue of pre-emptive predictions with regard to constitutional rights beyond privacy.