Category: Ideas

Antwerp Lecture: Evaluation and Effectiveness of Counter-Terrorism

IMG_6632This week I am at the beautiful Universitair Centrum Sint-Ignatius Antwerpen (part of the Quad at night pictured left) for an excellent and challenging workshop on Socially Responsible Innovation in Security. I have been asked to present one of the four framing lectures, mine on evaluation and effectiveness. Although the lecture builds on findings and thoughts that began to develop during my FP7 project SECILE (results reports in this book from Routledge), it is not a typical ‘scientific’ lecture inasmuch as I do not focus on presenting concrete results. Rather, in this lecture I make an argument from principle on the importance of ex post facto effectiveness review and the inadequacy of ex ante impact assessments no matter how well designed. The full text of the lecture, which will be developed into a chapter for the Centre’s annual publication, is here. The introduction gives a flavour.

In the past 14 years there has been an enormous expansion of counter-terrorism laws and policies at national, regional and international levels. Spurred on by the events of 9/11 and, later, the phenomenon of ‘foreign terrorist fighters’, states and international institutions have introduced laws and policies that encroach greatly on fundamental freedoms and human rights (at times in ways that undermine the democratic process), and the international conception of the ‘rule of law’ has been ‘securitised’ to a striking degree. These measures include measures to permit, require, and fund technologically innovative approaches to counter-terrorism: surveillance, smart borders and so on. While these measures raise particular questions flowing from the technologies applied, this paper take a step back from the specifics of technology innovation in security to address a matter of structural, ethical and deliberative concern across the field of security: effectiveness.

Evaluation of whether counter-terrorist measures—including those using innovative technologies—are, in fact, effective is worryingly inadequate or, in many cases, simply non-existent. In this lecture, I will outline the expansion in counter-terrorism and its impact for human rights, democracy and the Rule of Law in order to argue that evaluation of effectiveness is key in maintaining the legitimacy of the counter-terrorist state and supra-state. Having done that, I will explore what the notion of ‘effectiveness’ means in this context, identifying both meta- and specific objectives as critical sites of analysis. Based on this, the paper will argue for the implementation of critical, reflexive and comprehensive ex post facto effectiveness evaluation of counter-terrorist measures and evaluation.

Human Rights in Collaboration: Launch Event & Getting Involved

CRsZdlCWIAAaWpDLast 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

IMG_6511I am currently in beautiful Giardini Naxos on Sicily for the 9th 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”