Overview
The 2014 Birkbeck Law Review Conference was a two day event open to students, policy makers, academics and legal practitioners. The purpose of the conference was to engage in a critical academic debate in the fields of privacy and surveillance. This conference examined the legal debates surrounding this topical subject and provided an in-depth analysis through philosophical, societal, and journalistic lenses.
We wished to critically explore the possibilities and limitations of challenging surveillance within the human rights framework and its effects on recent advocacy efforts in this field. We also sought to look into alternative resistant practices: from disobedience, social mobilisation and direct action, to observing the watchers (surveillance, inverse surveillance), whistleblowing, cyber activism and activist journalism.
This conference also engaged with the trends that complicate the traditional 'big brother' paradigms that tend to place the state at one end and its individual subject at the other. The thematic stream explored the decentralisation and diffusions of surveillance, surveillance locations, and surveying actors, and the implications for both individual freedom and social exclusion. This overall topic was divided into three different streams: 'Surveillance and Control Society: Philosophical Perspective'; 'Privacy vs. Technology: Human Autonomy in a Technologically-Enhanced World', and; 'Confronting Surveillance--Societal Implications'.
Papers presented at the conference form the content of Volume 2 Issue 2 of the Birkbeck Law Review, which can be found here.
The conference was sponsored by:
We wished to critically explore the possibilities and limitations of challenging surveillance within the human rights framework and its effects on recent advocacy efforts in this field. We also sought to look into alternative resistant practices: from disobedience, social mobilisation and direct action, to observing the watchers (surveillance, inverse surveillance), whistleblowing, cyber activism and activist journalism.
This conference also engaged with the trends that complicate the traditional 'big brother' paradigms that tend to place the state at one end and its individual subject at the other. The thematic stream explored the decentralisation and diffusions of surveillance, surveillance locations, and surveying actors, and the implications for both individual freedom and social exclusion. This overall topic was divided into three different streams: 'Surveillance and Control Society: Philosophical Perspective'; 'Privacy vs. Technology: Human Autonomy in a Technologically-Enhanced World', and; 'Confronting Surveillance--Societal Implications'.
Papers presented at the conference form the content of Volume 2 Issue 2 of the Birkbeck Law Review, which can be found here.
The conference was sponsored by:
IlsA, Birkbeck Chapter |
Birkbeck School of Law |
Opening Address
Delivered by the Executive Dean of the Birkbeck School of Law
Professor Patricia Tuitt
Executive Dean
School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London
Patricia Tuitt, BA, LLM (London) joined Birkbeck as a Lecturer in Law in 1998 and is now Professor of Law and Executive Dean of the Law School. She was previously a Lecturer in Law at the University of East London. She went on to take a leading role in the management of the department, rising through the ranks to Reader and then Professor, giving in 2011 an inaugural lecture entitled: Used up and misused: the Nation State, the European Union and the Insistent Presence of the Colonial.
Patricia was instrumental in making the argument for the transition of the Law Department to a separate school (along with the other four major schools of Birkbeck) and led the way to effecting the transformation from department to school.
Patricia’s principle areas of teaching are EU and tort law and her research focuses on international refugee law and critical race theory. Her two monographs are entitled Race, Law, Resistance (Glasshouse Press, 2004) and False Images: Law's Construction of the Refugee (Pluto Press, Law and Social Theory Series, 1996).
Executive Dean
School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London
Patricia Tuitt, BA, LLM (London) joined Birkbeck as a Lecturer in Law in 1998 and is now Professor of Law and Executive Dean of the Law School. She was previously a Lecturer in Law at the University of East London. She went on to take a leading role in the management of the department, rising through the ranks to Reader and then Professor, giving in 2011 an inaugural lecture entitled: Used up and misused: the Nation State, the European Union and the Insistent Presence of the Colonial.
Patricia was instrumental in making the argument for the transition of the Law Department to a separate school (along with the other four major schools of Birkbeck) and led the way to effecting the transformation from department to school.
Patricia’s principle areas of teaching are EU and tort law and her research focuses on international refugee law and critical race theory. Her two monographs are entitled Race, Law, Resistance (Glasshouse Press, 2004) and False Images: Law's Construction of the Refugee (Pluto Press, Law and Social Theory Series, 1996).
KeyNote Speakers
Dr Mark Ellis
Executive Director
The International Bar Association (IBA)
Prior to joining the IBA, Dr Ellis spent ten years as the first Executive Director of the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI), a project of the American Bar Association (ABA). Providing technical legal assistance to twenty-eight countries in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, and to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, CEELI remains one of the most extensive international pro-bono legal assistance projects ever undertaken by the US legal community.
He served as Legal Advisor to the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, chaired by Justice Richard J Goldstone and was appointed by OSCE to advise on the creation of Serbia’s War Crimes Tribunal. He was actively involved with the Iraqi High Tribunal and is a member of the Disciplinary Advisory Panel to the Defence Counsel for the ICTY and ICTR. He also acted as legal advisor to the defence team of Nuon Chea at the Cambodian War Crimes Tribunal (ECCC).
Dr Ellis was a long-time consultant to the World Bank on investment policies in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and was an Adjunct Professor at The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law. He is presently an Adjunct Professor at The Florida State University College of Law.
A frequent speaker and media commentator on international legal issues, he appears regularly on CNN International, Al Jazeera, and the BBC. He has published extensively in the areas of international humanitarian law, war crimes tribunals, and the development of the rule of law and his op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Sunday Times (South Africa) and The London Times. His latest publication--Sovereignty and Justice: Creating Domestic War Crimes Courts within the Principle of Complementarity--was published this year by Cambridge Press.
Dr Ellis is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and serves on a number of boards, including the DLA Piper ‘New Perimeter’ pro bono project, and the Leiden University ICC Moot Court Competition. He serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of National Security Law and Policy and The Hague Journal on the Rule of Law.
He is the co-recipient of the American Bar Association’s World Order Under Law Award, the recipient of Florida State University’s Distinguished Graduate Award and the University’s College of Social Sciences & Public Policy Distinguished Alumni Award. In 2012, he was awarded the Degree of Doctors of Laws (LL.D), honoris causa, from the College of Law of England and Wales.
Executive Director
The International Bar Association (IBA)
Prior to joining the IBA, Dr Ellis spent ten years as the first Executive Director of the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI), a project of the American Bar Association (ABA). Providing technical legal assistance to twenty-eight countries in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, and to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, CEELI remains one of the most extensive international pro-bono legal assistance projects ever undertaken by the US legal community.
He served as Legal Advisor to the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, chaired by Justice Richard J Goldstone and was appointed by OSCE to advise on the creation of Serbia’s War Crimes Tribunal. He was actively involved with the Iraqi High Tribunal and is a member of the Disciplinary Advisory Panel to the Defence Counsel for the ICTY and ICTR. He also acted as legal advisor to the defence team of Nuon Chea at the Cambodian War Crimes Tribunal (ECCC).
Dr Ellis was a long-time consultant to the World Bank on investment policies in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and was an Adjunct Professor at The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law. He is presently an Adjunct Professor at The Florida State University College of Law.
A frequent speaker and media commentator on international legal issues, he appears regularly on CNN International, Al Jazeera, and the BBC. He has published extensively in the areas of international humanitarian law, war crimes tribunals, and the development of the rule of law and his op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Sunday Times (South Africa) and The London Times. His latest publication--Sovereignty and Justice: Creating Domestic War Crimes Courts within the Principle of Complementarity--was published this year by Cambridge Press.
Dr Ellis is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and serves on a number of boards, including the DLA Piper ‘New Perimeter’ pro bono project, and the Leiden University ICC Moot Court Competition. He serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of National Security Law and Policy and The Hague Journal on the Rule of Law.
He is the co-recipient of the American Bar Association’s World Order Under Law Award, the recipient of Florida State University’s Distinguished Graduate Award and the University’s College of Social Sciences & Public Policy Distinguished Alumni Award. In 2012, he was awarded the Degree of Doctors of Laws (LL.D), honoris causa, from the College of Law of England and Wales.
Ms Micheal Vonn
Policy Director
British Columbia Civil Liberties Association
Micheal Vonn is a Canadian lawyer and the Policy Director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. She has been an adjunct professor in the faculty of law at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and an adjunct professor at the UBC School of Library Archival and Information Studies, where she has taught civil liberties, information ethics and intellectual freedom. She is also a regular guest instructor for UBC’s College of Health Disciplines Interdisciplinary Elective in HIV/AIDS care. Ms Vonn is a frequent speaker on a variety of civil liberties topics including privacy, national security, policing, surveillance and free speech. Her work has been featured in Surveillance and Society, Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, HIV/AIDS Policy and Law Review, Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law and the book Eyes Everywhere: The Global Growth of Camera Surveillance. She was a planning committee member for Computers, Freedom and Privacy 2014 and is an advisory board member of Privacy International.
Policy Director
British Columbia Civil Liberties Association
Micheal Vonn is a Canadian lawyer and the Policy Director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. She has been an adjunct professor in the faculty of law at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and an adjunct professor at the UBC School of Library Archival and Information Studies, where she has taught civil liberties, information ethics and intellectual freedom. She is also a regular guest instructor for UBC’s College of Health Disciplines Interdisciplinary Elective in HIV/AIDS care. Ms Vonn is a frequent speaker on a variety of civil liberties topics including privacy, national security, policing, surveillance and free speech. Her work has been featured in Surveillance and Society, Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, HIV/AIDS Policy and Law Review, Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law and the book Eyes Everywhere: The Global Growth of Camera Surveillance. She was a planning committee member for Computers, Freedom and Privacy 2014 and is an advisory board member of Privacy International.
Professor Dr Mireille Hildebrandt
Chair of Smart Environments, Data Protection and the Rule of Law
Institute of Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS)
Radbound University Nijmegen
Mireille Hildebrandt is full professor of Smart Environments, Data Protection and the Rule of Law at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS) at Radboud University and associate professor of Jurisprudence at the Erasmus School of Law, both in the Netherlands. Since 2002 she is part of the Research Group of Law, Science, Technology & Society (LSTS) at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Professor Hildebrandt is focused on the impact of everyday artificial intelligence on the substance of fundamental rights, such as privacy, data protection, non-discrimination, due process and the presumption of innocence. She is one of the founding members of the Digital Enlightenment Forum, and one of the authors of The European Commission’s Onlife Manifesto (The Digital Agenda for Europe). She has written 3 books, co-edited 14 books and special issues, authored 85 scientific chapters and articles. With Serge Gutwirth she edited Profiling the European Citizen (Springer 2008) and with Katja de Vries she edited Privacy, Due Process and the Computational Turn (Routledge 2013). In the spring of 2015 her book Smart Technologies and the End(s) of Law: Novel Entanglements of Law and Technology, will be published by Edward Elgar.
Chair of Smart Environments, Data Protection and the Rule of Law
Institute of Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS)
Radbound University Nijmegen
Mireille Hildebrandt is full professor of Smart Environments, Data Protection and the Rule of Law at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS) at Radboud University and associate professor of Jurisprudence at the Erasmus School of Law, both in the Netherlands. Since 2002 she is part of the Research Group of Law, Science, Technology & Society (LSTS) at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Professor Hildebrandt is focused on the impact of everyday artificial intelligence on the substance of fundamental rights, such as privacy, data protection, non-discrimination, due process and the presumption of innocence. She is one of the founding members of the Digital Enlightenment Forum, and one of the authors of The European Commission’s Onlife Manifesto (The Digital Agenda for Europe). She has written 3 books, co-edited 14 books and special issues, authored 85 scientific chapters and articles. With Serge Gutwirth she edited Profiling the European Citizen (Springer 2008) and with Katja de Vries she edited Privacy, Due Process and the Computational Turn (Routledge 2013). In the spring of 2015 her book Smart Technologies and the End(s) of Law: Novel Entanglements of Law and Technology, will be published by Edward Elgar.
Distinguished Panelists
Dr Gloria González Fuster, LSTS, Vrije Unversiteit Brussel, Belgium
Dr Natalina Stamile, University of Catanzaro, Italy
Ms Amy Corcoran, Birkbeck, University of London, United Kingdom
Mr Bernard Keenan, London School of Economics, United Kingdom
Professor David Rosen, Trinity College, Hartford, USA
Professor Aaron Santesso, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Mr Jamie Grace, Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom
Mr Raphael Ramos Monteiro de Souza, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, National Law School, Brazil
Dr Arne Hintz, Cardiff University, United Kingdom
Dr Natalina Stamile, University of Catanzaro, Italy
Ms Amy Corcoran, Birkbeck, University of London, United Kingdom
Mr Bernard Keenan, London School of Economics, United Kingdom
Professor David Rosen, Trinity College, Hartford, USA
Professor Aaron Santesso, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Mr Jamie Grace, Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom
Mr Raphael Ramos Monteiro de Souza, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, National Law School, Brazil
Dr Arne Hintz, Cardiff University, United Kingdom
DISCLAIMER: All views presented at this conference are the sole views of the presenters and do not represent the views of the Birkbeck Law Review (BBKLR). The BBKLR does not take any responsibility for the accuracy and/or take responsibility for the information presented either by visual, audio or by any other means.
Please contact features@bbklr.org for any enquiries.
Please contact features@bbklr.org for any enquiries.