Legal Implications of Using Social Media Data in Emergency Response

Slandail is a software prototype designed for use and exploitation of digital content on social media for emergency and disaster management. This will involve the collection, reproduction, distribution, transfer, processing and, potentially, communication to the public of harvested personal data and information by emergency responders. However, the use of a system such as Slandail would have implications for the laws protecting human rights, personal data, and copyright within and outside of the European Union. This paper provides a brief overview of these laws, and the challenges they pose to the development of the Slandail software prototype, with part one focusing on data protection, part two on human rights, and part three on copyright and licensing rights.