Parking and Drafting

It helps not to be prolix.

In Barrett v City of Cockburn [2023] WASC 384 the Court notes 

 The appellant seeks leave to appeal against judgments of conviction that were entered against him in the Magistrates Court in Fremantle on 24 November 2020 in relation to one charge of parking on a portion of a thoroughfare to which a no parking sign applied, contrary to cl 26(1)(e) of the City of Cockburn Parking & Parking Facilities Law 2007 (Parking Law) (Charge 1), and one charge of driving across a footpath, contrary to s 9.4(b) and s 12.24 of the City of Cockburn (Local Government Act) Local Laws 2000 (Local Laws) (Charge 2). The appellant also seeks leave to appeal against fines of $200 imposed in respect of each of those offences. Finally, the appellant applies for leave to appeal against an order made that he pay the respondent's costs fixed at $8,074. 

An appeal notice was filed in this court on 20 April 2022, almost 16 months after the judgments of conviction were entered and sentence was imposed. Accordingly, the appellant requires an extension of time within which to appeal. 

Although it is very clear that the appellant feels aggrieved, and not only because he was convicted of these offences, it is a great pity that so much time and effort has been expended on a matter that resulted in a total of $400 in fines, particularly when the appellant had the option of dealing with the matter by paying a modified penalty of $100. 

The appeal notice that was filed in this matter, together with enclosures, extends to a total of 30 pages. The purported grounds of appeal are discursive and thus the precise nature of the alleged errors and circumstances that are said to give rise to a conclusion that a miscarriage of justice was occasioned are extremely difficult to identify. It is regrettable that the appellant was also permitted to file and serve a 694-page document, euphemistically referred to as an 'Outline Synopsis' as well as a 60-page 'List of Evidence' after the appeal notice was lodged. These documents have hindered, rather than assisted, the court in resolving this matter. 

In an unsuccessful attempt to bring the appellant's complaints about the primary court's decision into focus, on 6 September 2022 a registrar of this court made orders requiring the appellant to file and serve a 10-page summary of the grounds of appeal, cross-referenced to his submissions. In response the appellant filed a four-page document entitled 'Written Submissions Introduction' and a 10-page document entitled 'Written Submissions', both of which fell well short of achieving their desired purpose. 

In addition to the above documents, and compounding the lack of focus, the appellant filed a 67-page, colour-coded document entitled 'Summary of All Evidence', together with an application in an appeal (and a supporting affidavit) in which the appellant sought an order that he be permitted to tender the material referred to in that document on the appeal. Further, in accordance with additional orders made by the registrar, the appellant filed a 19-page colour-coded document entitled 'Evidence to Written Submission', which appears to constitute an attempt to correlate the evidence referred to in the 'Summary' with the submissions made in the 'Written Submissions', as well as the 694-page synopsis. 

The appeal was listed for directions on 20 February 2023. The purpose of the directions hearing was to see whether the appellant was able to clarify his grounds of appeal, and the contentions made in support of those grounds. It was pointed out to the appellant that because of the sheer volume of material that he sought to rely on there was a risk that the points that he wished to make on the appeal might not be properly identified. 

Following the directions hearing, my associate provided the parties with a document setting out, in summary form, the grounds of appeal that the court understood the appellant wished to argue. The content of that document was based on what had been discussed with the appellant at the directions hearing. After considering the document the appellant then made some amendments, added some comments, returned it to the court and provided a copy to the respondent. The court has proceeded on the basis that this document, a copy of which appears as Annexure 1 to these reasons, sets out all the grounds of appeal that the appellant wishes to rely on (Grounds of Appeal). 

Further orders were also made at the directions hearing on 20 February 2023. Those orders were made because the grounds of appeal complained, in effect, that a miscarriage of justice was occasioned because the appellant was prohibited from being able to use a computer during his trial and because certain documents that were the subject of a summons to produce were not produced at his trial. The orders required the appellant to provide lists of the documents the appellant contended were on his computer to which he was denied access, and the documents he contended had not been provided under summons. The appellant complied with those orders and provided two lists of documents. In keeping with the history of this matter, the documents were provided three weeks after the ordered date, and one of those documents was 26 pages long. 

I have not set out the unfortunate history of this matter simply to criticise an unrepresented appellant. However, and with the benefit of hindsight, the court should not have indulged the appellant. The appellant's approach to this matter has severely hampered my ability to confidently and efficiently identify the key points the appellant wishes to make. ... 

Considering all the matters to which I have referred, and with some misgivings because of the lengthy delay, I have reached the view that it is in the interests of justice to grant the appellant an extension of time within which to appeal against the costs order that was made by the magistrate. Accordingly, I would grant an extension of time within which to appeal against the costs order. I would also grant leave to appeal against that order, allow the appeal against the costs order, set aside the order that the appellant pay the respondent's costs and, adopting a broad-brush approach, order that the appellant pay the respondent's costs in the sum of $6,000.

Defamation

Yesterday's 2nd Reading Speech for the Defamation Amendment Bill 2023 (NSW) seeks to give effect to the Stage 2 reforms program for Australia's uniform defamation laws. 

It states 

 In summary, there are six key reforms: one, a conditional exemption from defamation liability for conduit, caching and storage services, and for search engines in relation to organic search results; two, updates to the mandatory requirements for an offer to make amends for online publications; three, a requirement for courts to consider balancing factors when making preliminary discovery orders against digital intermediaries; four, a new innocent dissemination defence for digital intermediaries, subject to a simple complaints process; five, a specific power for courts to make non-party orders against digital intermediaries to prevent access to defamatory matter online; and six, expanded electronic means by which notices can be served. 

I now turn to the detail of the proposed digital intermediary amendments. Schedule 1 [1] to the bill adds new defined terms to the existing section 4 definitions of the Defamation Act 2005. The new defined terms are fundamental to the operation of the digital intermediary amendments in the bill. I will explain some of the new defined terms later as I outline the substantive amendment provisions to which they relate. However, some of terms apply broadly across the amendment provisions so I will cover those now, starting with the term ''digital intermediary". First, I note that a lot of policy thinking, consultation and refinement sits behind this definition. Digital intermediary, in the context of the publication of digital matter, is defined to mean: … a person, other than an author, originator or poster of the matter, who provides or administers the online service by means of which the matter is published. 

A note makes clear that there may be more than one digital intermediary in relation to the publication of the same digital matter. ''Online service" essentially means any service provided to a person to enable them to use the internet. This includes using the internet to do a range of things, such as sending or receiving content, searching for content, sharing content and interacting with other people. Some examples of an online service are included in a note to the definition to emphasise the range of services covered by the definition. An ''online service" specifically includes a forum created or administered by a person using a facility provided by an internet‑based social media platform that enables users to share content or interact with other users about a topic. 

The term ''digital intermediary" is intended to apply broadly. It was developed to cover the full spectrum of functions considered by the stage two review of the Model Defamation Provisions. It deliberately includes forum administrators. It is also intended to cover any new or emerging functions, given the pace at which technology in this area evolves. Another important aspect of the definition of 'digital intermediary is the exclusions. The definition specifically excludes the author, originator or poster of the matter because they are not intermediaries. "Poster" is defined to mean a person who uses the online service to communicate the matter to one or more other persons. The terms ''author" and ''originator" are not defined. Both terms are used in the existing innocent dissemination offence at section 32. 

For the purpose of the digital intermediary amendments, firstly, ''author" is intended to cover circumstances such as when a person who writes a defamatory statement is not the person who posts it. Secondly, ''originator" is intended to include anyone who plays a role in creating the content. Often they may also be the poster, but in some circumstances they may not—for example, where a person edits and endorses a statement that is drafted and posted by another person. Finally, the term ''digital matter" is defined to mean "matter published in electronic form by means of an online service". This is not intended to affect or limit the meaning of ''matter" in the Act. It is only intended to cover a subset of matter, being digital matter. ... 

I now turn to parts of the bill relating to exemptions from liability for digital intermediaries. Schedule 1 [3] to the bill inserts new division 2A into the Defamation Act. This includes two conditional statutory exemptions from defamation liability that apply to narrow classes of digital intermediaries. In the development of defamation law it has been argued that certain traditional intermediaries, such as telephone lines and postal services, are so passive in the publication process that they are not publishers; indeed, they are mere conduits. The stage two review considered if there are equal passive digital intermediary functions that should have statutory protection from defamation liability for third‑party content. The stage two review concluded that there is a very small group of digital intermediary functions that meet this criteria. 

As a result, schedule 1 [3] establishes a conditional exemption from defamation liability for three specific digital intermediary functions. Firstly, a caching service that stores content temporarily to make onward transmission more efficient will be exempted. For example, this includes files commonly downloaded from a website temporarily and automatically stored to speed up the download time. Secondly, a conduit service whose principal function is to enable users to connect with the internet, send data or receive data will be exempted. This includes internet service providers and email service providers. Thirdly, a storage service whose principal function is to enable users to store content remotely will be exempted. An example is a cloud service provider that enables users to store photos for later retrieval. Proposed new section 10B defines "caching service", "conduit service" and "storage service" and includes examples to illustrate what each definition is intended to cover. 

The policy rationale for this narrow exemption from liability is to recognise the passive role that these digital intermediaries play in the publication process. This does not substantially change the law. These digital intermediaries are generally not the subject of defamation claims and are unlikely to be considered publishers under the Commonwealth test. The intention is to provide clarity and certainty. The exemption would apply irrespective of whether the digital intermediary knew, or ought reasonably to have known, the digital matter was defamatory. Given the breadth of this protection, the exemption only applies very narrowly, and a set of conditions are included to ensure that if an intermediary plays a more active role in a publication—for example, by editing the content—that would make the intermediary ineligible. 

The conditions that apply to the exemption are listed at proposed new section 10C (1) (c). Even where a digital intermediary meets the definition of caching, conduit or storage service, if it played a more active role in relation to the digital matter in question, such as editing or promoting, the exemption would not apply. The stage two review of the Model Defamation Provisions also included careful considerations of the functions performed by search engine providers. Ultimately, it was concluded that a conditional exemption from defamation liability from search engine providers in relation to organic search results is appropriate. 

The policy rationale behind this conclusion is that, firstly, in performing the standard functions, search engine providers have no interest in the content. They simply use an automated process to provide users with access to third‑party content. Secondly, search engine providers are unable to remove content from the internet and can only block access to identified URLs from their search engine. Thirdly, unlike, for example, a social media platform, a search engine provider does not have any relationship with the original author. Fourthly, search engines provide significant public benefit and operate on a massive scale. The exemption for search engine providers applies regardless of whether the search engine provider knew, or ought reasonably to have known, the digital matter was defamatory. 

Given the strength of the protection, the exemption has been designed to apply very narrowly. Firstly, proposed new section 10D (1) provides that the exemption only applies to the publication of digital matter comprised of search results or the publication of digital matter to which the search results provide a hyperlink. ''Search result" is defined in proposed new section 10B. It means a result generated by a search engine that is limited to identifying a webpage on which content is located by reference to one or more of: the title of the webpage, a hyperlink to the webpage, or an extract or an image from the webpage. 

Secondly, proposed new section 10D (1) confines the exemption to publications where the search engine provider's role was limited to providing an automated process for the user to generate the results. An example of a publication that would not be covered by the exemption due to these limitations is an autocomplete suggestion for search terms. Another example is an answer composed by artificial intelligence, such as Bing Chat, in response to a question input by a user. Thirdly, proposed new section 10D (2) provides that sponsored search results are not covered by the exemption. 

The new court power to make orders against non-party digital intermediaries provides for a safeguard where defamatory matter may have been published, even where digital intermediaries qualify for a statutory exemption from liability. The bill will insert new section 39A into the Defamation Act, providing the court with the power to order a digital intermediary that is not a party to proceedings to remove or disable access to defamatory matter online in certain circumstances. The new court power would apply to all digital intermediaries, including those that qualify for the statutory exemptions, meaning that even if a digital intermediary is exempt from liability it will still be possible for orders to be made that the digital intermediary remove access to defamatory material in some circumstances. I will go into further detail about this amendment as I speak about remedies introduced by the bill. 

The bill provides an early determination process for the digital intermediary exemptions. This is at proposed new section 10E, which provides that the judicial officer in defamation proceedings is to determine whether an exemption is established as soon as practicable before the trial starts, unless the judicial officer is satisfied that there are good reasons to postpone the determination to a later state of the proceedings. New section 10E (2) (a) provides a non-exhaustive list of matters that are relevant to this decision. The purpose of the early determination process is to support the policy intent behind the statutory exemptions—namely, to recognise that the role of these digital intermediaries in the publication process is such that they should not be subject to defamation claims. Ideally, the early determination process will mean that time and costs are not expended unnecessarily. The savings and transitional provisions in relation to the statutory exemptions are the same as those for the new innocent dissemination defence. I will briefly outline the intended operation when I speak about the new defence. 

One of the objects of the Defamation Act 2005 is to promote speedy and non-litigious methods of dispute resolution. Part 3 of the Act establishes a procedure to enable parties to settle disputes without the need for expensive litigation by encouraging a publisher to make a reasonable offer to make amends to the aggrieved person. If the aggrieved person does not accept an offer that was reasonable in all the circumstances, the publisher may rely on their offer to make amends as a defence in any subsequent defamation action against them, in accordance with the terms of the Act. 

Section 15 of the Act sets out a number of elements a reasonable offer to make amends must and may include. I will refer to these requirements as the mandatory and discretionary elements of an offer to make amends. The bill includes two proposed amendments to section 15 of the Act. The first is a minor amendment to one of the discretionary elements of an offer to make amends. Section 15 (1A) (b) currently provides that, if the defamatory matter in question has been "published on a website or any other electronically accessible location", an offer to make amends may include "an offer to remove the matter from the website or location". That was added as part of the stage one amendments to accommodate online publications. 

The bill amendments section 15 (1A) (b) to provide that, if the matter is digital matter, an offer to make amends may include an "offer to take access prevention steps in relation to the matter". This amendment broadens the provision by allowing a publisher to offer to remove, block, disable or otherwise prevent access to a matter, and is consistent with wording used in the bill. A more significant amendment is proposed in relation to two of the mandatory elements of an offer to make amends. 

These existing mandatory elements are, firstly, section 15 (1) (d), which provides, relevantly, that an offer to make amends must include "an offer to publish, or join in publishing, a reasonable correction of, or clarification of or additional information about, the matter in question"; and, secondly, section 15 (1) (e), which provides that an offer to make amends must include, "if material containing the matter has been given to someone else by the publisher or with the publisher's knowledge, an offer to take, or join in taking, reasonable steps to tell the other person that the matter is or may be defamatory of the complainant". 

These mandatory elements were not originally designed with digital intermediaries for online publications in mind. They make sense for traditional publications, such hard copy newspapers, that do not remain readily accessible at the click of a button. If the publisher of a newspaper receives a concerns notice about a defamatory statement in a particular edition, they could then offer to publish a correction in a subsequent edition, presumably reaching largely the same audience. However, a digital intermediary may not be able to do these things. For example, a search engine would not be able to publish a reasonable correction for a search result. Also, when defamatory matter is published online, it often stays there. Added to this concern is the ease and speed at which it can be further disseminated to a wider audience. It is understandable then that, for many plaintiffs, their central concern is simply to have the matter removed. 

The bill inserts new section 15 (1B), which updates the operation of these two mandatory elements for digital matter. It provides that, if the matter in question is digital matter, an offer to take access prevention steps may be made instead of or in addition to either or both of the offers mentioned in paragraphs 15 (1) (d) and (e). The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that there is an appropriate avenue for offering to make amends in circumstances where it is not possible or meaningful for online publishers to publish a correction or clarification. It also reflects the kind of remedy that many plaintiffs are seeking in relation to online publications. An important safeguard is that, under the existing section 18, if the defendant seeks to rely on the offer to make amends defence, the court must be satisfied that, in all the circumstances, the offer was reasonable. The offer to make amends changes will apply to offers made after the commencement of the amendments. That is even where the matter is published before the commencement. 

Many originators who post defamatory material online do so using a pseudonym. In order to commence defamation proceedings, the plaintiff must identify and locate the originator. In some recent cases, particularly in the Federal Court, plaintiffs have obtained preliminary discovery orders requiring a digital intermediary to disclose information concerning the originator's identity. Australian courts already can and do consider proportionality, privacy and the risk of abuse of process in exercising the discretion to make preliminary discovery orders. However, there may still be a risk that such orders are abused or have a chilling effect. 

Proposed new section 23A provides that, before making an order for preliminary discovery, the court must take into account the objects of the Act and any privacy, safety or other public interest considerations. This does not provide a new avenue to seek preliminary discovery; it simply applies this requirement over the general rules. While courts already have the discretion to consider these factors, there is value in making consideration of these factors mandatory. This will promote consistency across jurisdictions. It is also in the interests of protecting domestic violence victims and other vulnerable members of society. For example, a person who has published matter online using a pseudonym may fear for their safety. A bad actor could seek a preliminary discovery order on the basis that they want to commence defamation proceedings against the person when the real motive is to find out the person's current location or other contact details. 

Proposed new section 23A would ensure the court takes into account privacy and safety considerations before making a preliminary discovery order requiring a digital intermediary to disclose any identifying information it holds about the person. The savings and transitional provisions for proposed new section 23A are the same as for the power of the court to make non-party orders. I will briefly outline their intended operation when I speak about the power to make non-party orders in a moment.

Golden Passports

'Escaping the Exchange of Information: Tax Evasion via Citizenship-by-Investment' by Dominika Langenmayr and Lennard Zyska (CESifo Working Papers, 2021) comments 

 Over the last decade, the OECD and G20 countries launched various initiatives to promote international tax transparency. In the wake of these activities, countries have signed more than 3000 bilateral tax information exchange treaties; more than 100 countries have committed to automatic exchange of tax information. The exchange of tax information between countries has become the main policy instrument to enforce the taxation of capital income across borders. 

Several recent papers show that while tax information exchange decreases offshore tax evasion at the bilateral level, a large share of tax evaders does not repatriate their funds, but instead finds other ways to hide their money (see e.g. Johannesen and Zucman, 2014; Miethe and Menkhoff, 2019). However, previous literature did not identify how tax evaders circumvent tax information exchange. Our paper fills this gap by suggesting that one such strategy is the use of citizenship-by-investment programs. 

Citizenship-by-investment (CBI) programs offer citizenship rights in return for a financial investment in the country or for a donation as low as US$100,000. If a tax evader uses the acquired citizenship to open a bank account in a tax haven, the tax haven will exchange tax information with the country of acquired citizenship, not the true country of (tax) residency. Thus, CBI programs enable tax evaders to escape tax information exchange. 

We first illustrate the interplay between tax information exchange and citizenship- by-investment programs in an analytical model. The model frames tax evasion as a rational decision. Individuals can evade taxes by transferring money to a tax haven. The risk that the home country detects this tax evasion depends on whether the tax haven exchanges tax information with it, and on whether the individual has acquired a foreign citizenship. We model the agreement to exchange tax information as a Nash bargain between the individual’s home country and the tax haven. We show that high- income individuals evade taxes and the richest evaders acquire a new citizenship to lower the detection probability when evading taxes. The existence of CBI programs has two effects on tax evasion: First, these programs decrease individual detection probabilities (and thus, from the high-tax country’s point of view, expected fines). Second, they make it less likely that countries exchange tax information, as part of the potential revenue gain from information exchange is siphoned off by the CBI country. 

We then provide indirect empirical evidence that CBI programs are indeed (mis)used to circumvent tax information exchange. To do so, we use bilateral, quarterly information on cross-border bank deposits provided by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Consider the example of a German who acquires Dominican citizenship for US$100,000 and uses her new passport to open a bank account in Switzerland. With the new citizenship, her deposits in Switzerland will appear in the BIS data as a deposit from Dominica (instead of Germany), even though she continues to live in Germany and is still tax resident in Germany. We thus expect that the deposits in tax havens originating from countries offering CBI programs increase after such programs have been installed. Using regressions with country-pair fixed effects and an event study approach, we find that tax haven deposits from CBI countries increase by about half after the introduction of CBI programs, compared to deposits from countries not offering CBI. Our results are robust to using a large number of country-level control variables and different samples. We find no effect for residency-by-investment programs, potentially because they are less suited to circumvent tax information exchange. 

Our paper adds to two strands of literature. First, it contributes to the literature on individual tax evasion (see Sandmo, 2005; Slemrod, 2007; Alm, 2012, for reviews). Recently, several papers in this literature have evaluated the success of tax information exchange as an instrument to fight offshore tax evasion. TIEAs (Johannesen and Zucman, 2014; Hanlon et al., 2015; Heckemeyer and Hemmerich, 2020; Ahrens and Bothner, 2020), the EU Savings Directive (Johannesen, 2014; Caruana-Galizia and Caruana-Galizia, 2016), the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA, De Simone et al., 2020), and the OECD’s Common Reporting Standard (Miethe and Menkhoff, 2019; Casi et al., 2020) all decreased offshore tax evasion at the bilateral level. However, several of these studies have found that many tax evaders did not repatriate their funds, but relocated the money to other, non-compliant countries (Johannesen, 2014; Johannesen and Zucman, 2014; Casi et al., 2020) or invested in alternative assets not subject to reporting, such as residential real estate and artwork (De Simone et al., 2020). Overall, there is no evidence that information exchange led to a transition to legality. Our paper contributes to this literature by pointing out a novel way in which tax evaders can circumvent information exchange. 

Closest to our paper, Ahrens et al. (2021) analyze whether tax evaders engage in regulatory arbitrage to circumvent tax information exchange from a political science perspective. They study citizenship- and residency-by-investment programs as well as anonymous trusts and shell corporations as options for such regulatory arbitrage. In contrast to our paper, they find little evidence that CBI programs are used to circumvent tax information exchange. The fundamental difference in the results can be explained by several factors: First, Ahrens et al. (2021) look at over forty citizenship-and residency-by-investment programs together, while we focus on a subset of “high- risk” CBI programs defined by the OECD. Second, they use a smaller sample, focussing on investments in twelve major financial markets, while we focus on investments in tax havens. Thus, while the overall topic is similar, our paper is more narrowly focused on the use of CBI for offshore tax evasion and reaches rather different conclusions. 

As a second contribution, our paper also adds to the small literature studying the economic implications of CBI programs. Xu et al. (2015) discusses recent developments and implications of such programs for the real economy, i.e. risks to macroeconomic and financial stability for the mostly small countries offering such programs. Konrad and Rees (2020) focus on CBI programs in the European Union. Because of free movement in the EU, these programs automatically give a right to settle in any country within the EU. The authors argue that individual EU countries sell their citizenship at prices lower than what would be optimal from an EU perspective, as they do not consider the effect of their CBI programs on other European countries. Parker (2017) points out that such a conflict is inherent in the idea of ‘post-national’ citizenship championed by the EU. Our analytical model argues that the proliferation of tax information exchange made it attractive to offer CBI for tax reasons, and points out that individuals acquiring citizenship do not necessarily relocate to their new country. This idea complements the literature above, which mostly focused on the implications of people relocating after acquiring the new citizenship. 

Section 2 provides some background information on tax information exchange and citizenship-by-investment programs, and Section 3 illustrates their interplay in a simple model. Section 4 presents the empirical setting, including some descriptive evidence. Section 5 discusses the results, and Section 6 concludes.

A study of Vanuatu is noted here. 

The new OCCRP 'Passports of the Caribbean' report notes that Dominica, with a population of around 70,000, appears to have sold upwards of 7,700 passports since 2007.

Vulnerability

'Vulnerability' by Sofia Ranchordas and Malou Beck in Mareille Kaufmann and Heidi Mork Lomell (eds) Handbook of Digital Criminology (2024) comments

While there has been commendable progress in the protection of vulnerable groups, the definition of vulnerability has been a fragmented exercise. While there are many meaningful descriptions of this concept, there is also the perception that scholars have defined vulnerability either too broadly or too narrowly. Definitions of vulnerability can be at times vague and elusive but they can also be biased and limited in their scope when vulnerability is connected to closed groups and categories. In addition, there has been a significant misuse of the term ‘vulnerability’ in scholarship, popular science, and media. This misuse of the concept risks depriving it from its intended meaning and protective impact. Considering existing scholarship, we review the four most relevant conceptualizations of vulnerability which define this concept based on the notions of (i) exposure to harm; (ii) individual particularities; (iii) the universal character of vulnerability; and (iv) the existence of multiple layers of vulnerability. 

In this contribution, we understand vulnerability as a universal, individual, and multi-layered concept. Vulnerability is the susceptibility of being placed in a position of economic, social, ecological or legal disadvantage with potential harm as result. In our administrative law and sociolegal scholarship, we develop the term ‘administrative vulnerability’ to convey the inability to critically engage with digital government, bureaucracy, and exercise rights before government on equal terms. Administrative vulnerability is a fluid concept that encompasses intrinsic and situational vulnerability. It conveys a state of inequality, i.e., citizens experiencing situational vulnerability will not be able to exercise their rights on equal terms. Administrative vulnerability also highlights the possibility of being harmed by digital government while experiencing vulnerability 

Drawing on interdisciplinary literature, we argue that vulnerability is a state that every individual can experience, rather than a status or label that is given to underprivileged groups. While some individuals are more exposed to different layers of vulnerability and may thus require additional protection, the state should be mindful that vulnerability is inescapable.