Category: Ideas

Data Retention and Counter-Terrorism

Since April 2014 data retention has been a high-profile topic in counter-terrorism. This is because the decision by the CJEU to strike down the Data Retention Directive (summary) brought to the fore a tension between (some) states’ desire for wide-reaching data retention powers, and concerns about the implications of such an approach for privacy and other civil liberties. In the meantime some non-EU states–notably the US and Australia–have been exploring ways of having telecommunications companies or other entities retain ‘metadata’ that the state could then access for investigatory reasons in particular situations. Data retention was one of the early ‘desk’ case studies in the SECILE project, and the report is available here. Since April, I have also written a number of blog commentaries on data retention for The Conversation and Oxford Human Rights Hub:

Will Australia Learn from the EU’s Mistakes on Data Retention?

Theresa May says the UK is not a surveillance state, but her proposed law might create one

Europe got phone spying wrong, now Obama should take heed

Data retention means you are on the record, like it or not

As the surge for data retention powers seems to continue, and to be presented as a core counter-terrorism power, it is apposite to bear in mind the Court of Justice’s warning on metadata. The Court note that such data retention constitutes a prima facie interference with fundamental rights, not least because so-called ‘metadata’ “may allow very precise conclusions to be drawn concerning…private lives”. The question facing policy makers now is how to limit collection of and access to data effectively in order to ensure that countering terrorism does not gives states the power to intrude on the privacy of all.

Hybridity: What Does it Have to offer?

I spent last Thursday at a workshop on ‘hybridity’ run by Rosa Freedman and Nicholas Lemay-Hebert at the Institute of Advanced Studies in the University of Birmingham. Along with a wide range of scholars from across the humanities and social sciences, I spent the day wondering about the meaning and utility of the concept. We started with a set of panels exploring the concept across a number of different contexts: migration, political science, law, literature and plenty of classics (Here are the slides from my presentation: FdLHYBRIDITY-1). Before going I was somewhat skeptical about hybridity. I must admit I retain a good deal of that skepticism, but I do think there are two potentially useful ways of thinking about hybridity that I explore below.

Continue reading “Hybridity: What Does it Have to offer?”

Discovering ‘Hybridity’; Sceptical Notes in Advance of a Workshop


This afternoon I will make my way to Birmingham for a workshop on ‘Hybridity’ at the University’s Institute of Advanced Studies there. Hybridity is a concept that seems to have a lot of purchase in peace and development studies, and to advance on theories of post-colonialism. Some–especially Rosa Freedman–are trying to explore its purchase in legal scholarship now as well.

Concerned with power, hybridity seems to me to be a theory that tries diagnostically to describe, see and structure exercises and stratagems for the (re)appropriation, shifting and reshaping of power and of hegemonic structures or concepts. I am not well read into the theory, and I think I have been invited in order to offer some provocations from the counter-terrorism perspective, but it will be interesting to see whether or not the day fleshes the theory out for me any.

At the moment, and from what I have heard and read so far, it seems to be difficult to distinguish in terms of intellectual content from much of queer theory, some of feminist theory, and quite a lot of regulatory theory (especially around participation, constitutionalism and legitimacy) and in at least some contexts a large chunk of transitional justice work.

I will go with an open mind, and I’ll share my speaking notes and slides and some reflections after the workshop, but it is interesting already to see how different disciplines seem to ‘miss’ each other and to become convinced of the novelty of their own frameworks when–seen from another perspective–they seem so close to that which exists elsewhere. The answer perhaps might be that hybridity is much more concerned with the practice of ordering power than the theory, but who can say that feminism isn’t concerned with practice? Or regulatory theory which is deeply reflexive (in fact, that is for me at the source the really compelling thing about it)?

I am sure all of these questions will be raised and discussed tomorrow, and if nothing else it proves the value of inter disciplinary conversations and workshops and of having institutions such as the IAS at Birmingham–and indeed our own Institute of Advanced Study here in Durham–to facilitate and support these conversations.

Academic lawyers, civic engagement, and human rights

I was very pleased to speak at the inaugural UCD Student Legal Convention on Thursday of last week. The Convention, sponsored by A&L Goodbody and associated with the Student Legal Service (of which I was senior treasurer when I worked in UCD) brought together an impressive range of speakers from politics, the senior civil service, the legal profession, the judiciary and the academy to discuss a broad variety of topics. I spoke on the panel on civic engagement and below are my speaking notes. The delivered remarks were considerably shorter but adhered to the general ‘gist’ of the below. Continue reading “Academic lawyers, civic engagement, and human rights”