By Dr Peter Rice, Steering Group Chair, SHAAP

In the third week of March 2020 I went to the supermarket at the height of the pasta, paracetamol and toilet paper rush.

In front of me were a couple of men in their early 30s. They seemed unfamiliar with the checkout routine. They had a trolley of what looked like a big family shop. The checkout operator took back two of the four boxes of muesli explaining there was a limit of two items per customer. The customers pointed to their six or so bottles of wine and said “But cereal is healthy, wine is not.” The operator agreed it was illogical, but those were the rules and alcohol wasn’t part of the restriction. They shrugged and got on with their day. The man behind me in the queue was buying several litres of vodka (and nothing else).

By Arianna Andreangeli, Senior Lecturer in Competition Law, Edinburgh Law School, University of Edinburgh

Remote monitoring is a phenomenon we are very familiar with. In a way, we are all being monitored remotely, whether via public or private CCTV systems. However, some individuals are subject to individual monitoring by way of judicial or administrative decisions. Offenders, for instance, can be subjected, in specific cases and upon their consent, to electronic tagging, often together with other restrictive measures such as night curfew, instead of imprisonment. Individuals seeking asylum can also be tagged in certain circumstances - for instance, after their application for refugee status is turned down and before repatriation.