fdelondras

Human Rights in Collaboration: Launch Event & Getting Involved

Last night I was very pleased to speak at the launch event for Human Rights in Collaboration, which was held in the beautiful Common Room at the Law Society in London. The event, entitled ‘Where are human rights headed?‘, was attended by almost one hundred delegates and featured short contributions from me (on terrorism and human rights), Nicole Bigby (on business and the human rights), and Stephen Grosz QC followed by a very involved Q&A session and discussion with the audience. The panel was excellently chaired by Jonathan Smithers, the President of the Law Society, and organised by Sarah Smith.

The event itself is the first in an ever-growing series of events across the country which aims to bring together academics, practitioners and civil society to discuss and debate human rights issues, often through unconventional means including poetry workshops. Human Rights in Collaboration will culminate with a closing panel, again in the Law Society, on December 10th when we will draw out and reflect on key questions and concerns that emerged across all of the events.

The programme of events was conceived and is coordinated by a small and informal committee of me, Nicole Bigby, Alison Klarfeld (BLP LLP), Sarah Smith (Law Society), and Rosa Freedman (Birmingham Law School). The website for the programme is here, and the events calendar is here (please note we are adding events all the time!).

If you are involved in an NGO, a member of a law school, or a legal professional of any kind who would like to organise an event to take place between now and December 10th do please get in touch!

New Conversation Blog: on GCHQ, data collection, and effectiveness

On Monday a new post from me was published on The Conversation. It is reproduced below.

The release of yet more of Edward Snowden’s leaked files reveals the still-astonishing scale and breadth of government surveillance after more than a year of revelations. These recent papers revealed to The Intercept website discuss a programme within Britain’s GCHQ known as “Karma Police”, in which the intelligence agency gathered more than 1.1 trillion pieces of information on UK citizens between August 2007 and March 2009.

Spurred on by the expansion of intercept warrants under the Terrorism Act 2006, this information is users’ internet metadata – details of phone calls, email messages and browser connections that includes passwords, contacts, phone numbers, email addresses, and folders used to organise emails, but not the actual content of messages or emails. Continue reading “New Conversation Blog: on GCHQ, data collection, and effectiveness”

Measuring the Effectiveness of Counter-Terrorism

I am currently in beautiful Giardini Naxos on Sicily for the 9^th Pan-European conference on international affairs, where I am presenting this afternoon on measuring effectiveness in counter-terrorism. The presentation draws on my work on EU counter-terrorism, including the edited collection The Impact, Legitimacy and Effectiveness of EU Counter-Terrorism that came out with Routledge earlier this year. The (very plain) power point that I will use is here, but the key points of the presentation are outlined below.

The first important thing to think about is what we mean by effectiveness when considering counter-terrorism. In very simple terms, we might say that effectiveness is simply the having of an effect, i.e. a measure is effective if it changes the status quo ante in some appreciable way. However, that simple conception is clearly insufficient. Continue reading “Measuring the Effectiveness of Counter-Terrorism”

Zappone & Gilligan v Revenue Commissioners: a feminist re-writing

Over recent years, Máiréad Enright, Aoife O’Donoghue and Julie McCandless have been leading the excellent Northern/Ireland Feminist Judgments Project. This takes the core idea of feminist judging from the original project of Rosemary Hunter, Clare McGlynn and Erika Rackley and applies it, with particular variations, to Ireland and Irish cases. Enright, O’Donoghue and McCandless have led the development of a close and intellectually challenging community of feminist scholars from, in and interested in Ireland, developed an excellent website, and edited what promises to be an excellent book bringing feminist judgments, commentaries and critical perspectives together. My contribution to that book was to attempt a feminist rewriting of Zappone & Gilligan v Revenue Commissioners & Ors. Continue reading “Zappone & Gilligan v Revenue Commissioners: a feminist re-writing”