In-Person Course | Privacy & Data: Law and Practice

On 12th and 13th February 2024, and for the 8th year in succession, UCL’s Institute of Brand and Innovation Law (IBIL) will deliver this 2-day CPD course featuring, as usual, a world class line up of speakers.

As in previous years, the programme will include core subjects complemented by topics that reflect current legal developments and technological and policy issues in the news. 

Core subjects include privacy and the press, data protection, international data transfer, data gathering and security, the governance regime of biometric data, and current cases being brought by Privacy International.

The 2024 season’s students can expect a wide range of complementary topics.  These include:

• the  monopoly issues of cloud storage;
• artificial intelligence and liability;
• challenging Silicon Valley in the US courts;
• the forum internum;
• valuation of personal data as an intangible asset;
• the UK’s new Online Safety Act.  

The 2024 keynote speaker will be the legendary computer scientist, futurist, writer, technologist and creator, Jaron Lanier.

Previous year’s students have been complimentary, labelling their experience:
•    “Fascinating.”
•    “an excellent, if not terrifying, overview”;
•    “brilliant, very information intense, but wonderfully conveyed”;
•    “the right mixture of factual information and philosophical debate”;
•     “The best course I have ever attended”.

View the programme

Day One - Monday 12th February

08:30	Registration
09:00	Introduction Professor Amanda Harcourt, UCL
09:15	The Forum Internum Susie Alegre, international human rights lawyer and author
10:15	Privacy and the Press Andy Lee, Partner, Brandsmiths LLP
11:15	Morning Coffee Break
11:30	GDPR and International Data Transfer: A briefing Jacob O’Brien, Brandsmiths
12:30	The Intangible Asset Value of Personal Data - and how it can affect M&A Ashley Winton, Partner, Mishcon de Reya
13:30	LUNCH
14:30	Ad Sales – how the system functions Bryony Long, partner, Lewis Silkin LLP
15:30	Cloud Storage and Monopoly Cecilia Rikap, Head of Research and Associate Professor in Economics at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)
16:30	Afternoon Tea Break
16:45	Biometric Data: Its Collection and Governance Professor Amanda Harcourt, UCL
17:45	Day one ends

Day Two - Tuesday 13th February

08:30	Registration
09:00	Data Gathering for Security Purposes Daniel Drewer, Europol
10:00	UK Online Safety Act Professor Amanda Harcourt, UCL
11:00	Morning coffee break
11:15	Privacy International’s current cases Dr. Ilia Siatitsa, Programme Director & Senior Legal Officer, Privacy International
12:15	Preparation for the AI and Liability Exercise
12:30	Lunch break
13:15	Exercise: AI and Liability:   A class exercise based upon Forever, the sci-fi novel by IP, robotics & AI law scholar, Professor Daniel Gervais, Vanderbilt University, USA.
14:15	Reclaiming our Privacy: Encryption, Anonymization and other Canny Tricks Chris James, General Counsel, Marco Polo | HSBC
15:15	Afternoon tea break
15:30	Fighting Back Against Big Tech Naomi Leeds, attorney, CA Goldberg PLLC, New York, USA
16:30	KEYNOTE: Jaron Lanier Computer scientist, visual artist, computer philosophy writer, technologist, futurist and composer of contemporary classical music
17:30	Course ends

 

About the speakers (in order of appearance)

Susie Alegre
An international human rights lawyer with over 20 years’ experience, Alegre has worked on some of the most challenging legal and political issues of our time including human rights and security, combating corruption in the developing world, protecting human rights at borders, the human rights impacts of climate change and the impact of Brexit on individual rights and security. She has particular expertise in human rights and technology and the protection of human rights in the small island context.

She is a barrister and associate tenant at the renowned Doughty Street Chambers, a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Roehampton and an Associate of The Policy Practice, a global leader in political economy analysis. Her work has taken her all over the world to places as diverse as Spain, Uganda, Brussels, Kyrgyzstan and Poland.  She has worked for international NGOs like Amnesty International and international organisations including the UN, the EU and the Council of Europe.  The breadth of her experience has given her great insight into the way international law and institutions work in practice.   She worked as Anti-Terrorism Adviser to the human rights department of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) advising on the delicate balance of security and human rights in the region including the US, EU and Former Soviet Union.  And in Uganda she worked on combating corruption for the EU. Alegre has practical experience in accountability and oversight roles that support the development of public policy.  In the UK, she has worked as a consultant for the Equality and Human Rights Commission and as an Ombudsman for the Financial Ombudsman Service and she is currently appointed as the Interception of Communications Commissioner for the Isle of Man.  In 2017 she set up the Island Rights Initiative bringing together her expertise in international human rights and citizens of small island communities.

Alegre has published widely and her latest book, Freedom to Think: Protecting a Fundamental Human Right in the Digital Age, was published in March 2023 by Atlantic Books.

Andrew Lee:
Andrew Lee is an experienced litigator with boutique firm Brandsmiths which specialise in intellectual property, sport and media law. Brandsmiths act for well-known brands such as Microsoft, BMW, Rolls Royce, Missguided, Speedo and Umbro and for high profile individuals including Gordon Ramsay, Mo Farah, David Haye and others in the public eye.   Andrew has extensive experience in advising clients in respect of the protection of their reputations and the protection of confidential and private information. This includes obtaining pre-publication undertakings and/or injunctions against the press, and helping clients in difficult personal situations where there is a threat by others to disclose private information. He has particular experience of dealing with problems arising on the internet such as individuals (often anonymously) posting defamatory allegations or undertaking campaigns of harassment, identifying those individuals and obtaining relief for clients.   

Jacob O’Brien
Jacob O’Brien is a Partner at boutique law firm Brandsmiths, which specialises in intellectual property, sport and media law. Brandsmiths acts for well-known brands such as Microsoft, BMW, JD Sports, Speedo and Umbro, as well as for high profile individuals including Gordon Ramsay, Mo Farah and David Haye.  Jacob has extensive experience advising clients in respect of their data protection obligations. As General Counsel of Missguided in 2018, Jacob worked with internal stakeholders in the build-up to the introduction of GDPR to ensure the business’s compliance with its obligations. Jacob works with clients to manage and implement data protection processes, as well as assisting with ICO investigations and complaints.

Ashley Winton
A former computer designer, Ashley is a fintech and privacy Partner within the Data Group of Mishcon de Reya’s Innovation Department. He advises on financial regulation, encryption and export control, data protection, privacy and cyber security matters with an emphasis on Blockchain, virtual currencies, and payment systems.  He advises extensively on the impact of privacy and information security law on cloud services, financial technology, telecommunications and international data transfers and has a particular focus on the intersection of competing laws, which can occur in the context of lawful interception of data, corporate investigations, government investigations or international litigation. For many years Ashley has advised the online behavioral advertising industry in Europe and has represented that industry in relation to its dealings with the European Commission, the Article 29 Working Party, the European Parliament and various national governments.  Ashley is a Ponemon Institute Fellow and for many years has been the Chairman of the Data Protection Forum, the largest independent data protection group in the UK. He regularly speaks at industry and academic conferences.

Bryony Long
Long is Co-Head of Lewis Silkin’s Data and Privacy Group and works in three main areas: data & privacy; commercial & consumer; and technology.  Although her main area of focus is data and privacy, she has a commercial & consumer and technology background so regularly advises clients across all three practice areas.  

From a data & privacy perspective, she has advised a number of high profile clients on a range of complex data protection issues particularly around data collection and commercial exploitation. She also has been involved in a number of high profile data regulatory investigations for large multi-national clients. 

Her particular area of expertise is use of data in an advertising and marketing context and she regularly provides strategic advice to brands, agencies, adtech vendors and publishers alike on data collection and commercial exploitation.  Long holds the IAPP CIPP/E data protection/privacy accreditation and regularly advises clients on a range of data and privacy issues including privacy notices, online data collection, data processing/sharing arrangements, international transfers, data breaches and data subject rights and FOIA request.
Examples of her recent work include advising various organisations on their GDPR compliance programmes (including one of the world’s largest advertising networks); several major retailers on their marketing strategy in light of the GDPR; a number of well-known brands, agencies, adtech vendors and publishers on compliance with the GDPR within the adtech ecosystem; a high street retailer on significant data breach; a large multinational organisation on its intra group data sharing arrangements; a large multinational on the data aspects of the roll out of its group wide CRM system.

Dr.  Cecilia Rikap
Dr Cecilia Rikap is Head of Research and Associate Professor in Economics at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). She is a Lecturer in International Political Economy (IPE) at City and programme director of the BSc in IPE. She is also a tenured researcher of the CONICET, Argentina’s national research council, and associate researcher at COSTECH lab, Université de Technologie de Compiègne.
Rikap is an advisor for Argentina's Ministries of Health and Productive Development. Cecilia’s research focuses on the political economy of science and technology. She studies the rising concentration of intangible assets leading to the emergence of intellectual monopolies, among others from tech and pharma industries, the distribution of intellectual (including data) rents, resulting geopolitical tensions and the effects of knowledge assetization on the knowledge commons and development. Her recent work includes corporate planning of global production and innovation systems driven by intellectual monopolization and how these leading corporations, in particular tech giants, are developing state-like features, thus reshaping core and peripheral states.

Amanda Harcourt
Course convenor and chair, Harcourt is an Honorary Professor at IBIL and has been designing the course programme since its inception in 2017.  Amanda has for nearly thirty years led a boutique IP law and business consultancy serving the copyright industries, predominantly advising US & European authors & performers working within the audio-visual and music industries.  She recently led the litigation and the PR support teams in US federal litigation in relation to the rights in a cult film of international reputation, overseeing an historic settlement which saw the film and all associated IP rights returned to the original creators the movie studio by the movie studio.  She had a longstanding senior consultancy role at global powerhouse Fremantle Media where, inter alia, she acted as legal gatekeeper for the global roll out of the multi-billion dollar music television sensation, Idol.   

She has advised on UK legislation in relation to IPR and prepared submissions to governments in both the UK and the USA on behalf of talent bodies in the film and music industries.  She spent nine years as an Adjunct Professor at a US Top Tier law school, designing an ABA-accredited entertainment law syllabus and designed the UK Government’s National Skills Council Syllabus on Copyright and Related Rights.  

Her particular expertise is collective management of IPR.  This originated in her work on behalf of Irish rock band U2 on a global audit of the band’s royalties from CMOs worldwide in relation to both authors’ and neighbouring rights administration.  Later equivalent reviews were performed for other rock legends. She is currently retained by the creators of a revolutionary new software system that can read and analyse over 250 different royalty payor accounting statements and formats. The system’s unique capabilities enable the cleansing of copyright metadata and detailed identification and tracking of the copyrights’ exploitation worldwide.

Dietrich Neumann
Dietrich Neumann is the Head of Department Administration at Europol, which includes the Agency’s HR and Finance units. In his previous role at Europol he was Head of the Legal Affairs unit and Head of Department Strategy, Legal Affairs and Policy Development. Before starting his job as Europol’s in-house counsel in 2004, he held positions at the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union and the German Federal Investigation Office. Mr. Neumann studied law at the University of Passau and the University of Erlangen. He also holds an L.L.M. from the Erasmus University Rotterdam in EU and International Public law.

Dr. Ilia Siatitsa
Dr Ilia Siatitsa a human rights lawyer and author. She is currently Programme Director and Senior Legal Officer at Privacy International. She leads PI’s work demanding state accountability for surveillance practices and is responsible for ongoing PI legal cases. As a human rights expert, she explores the impact of new technologies on human rights beyond the right to privacy. She holds a PhD in International Law from the University of Geneva. Her book on Serious violations of human rights: On the emergence of a new special regime was published with Oxford University Press in 2022.

Professor Daniel Gervais
Daniel Gervais is an internationally renowned legal scholar.  He focuses on international intellectual property law and the law of Artificial Intelligence. He spent 10 years researching and addressing policy issues as a legal officer at the World Trade Organization, head of the Copyright Projects section of the World Intellectual Property Organization, deputy secretary general of International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), and vice-chair of the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations. He is the author of The TRIPS Agreement: Drafting History and Analysis, a leading guide to the text that governs international intellectual property rights now in its fifth edition.
Before joining the Vanderbilt Law faculty in 2008, Professor Gervais served as acting dean and vice-dean for research of the Common Law Section at the University of Ottawa. Before entering the academy, he practised law as a partner with the technology law firm BCF in Montreal. He was also a consultant with the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.  He has been a visiting professor at numerous international universities and a visiting scholar at Stanford Law School. In 2012, he was the Gide Loyrette Nouel Visiting Chair at Sciences Po Law School in Paris. He is editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed Journal of World Intellectual Property. In 2012, he was the first North American law professor admitted to the Academy of Europe. In 2017 he became chairman of the International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property (ATRIP). In 2022, he was a Distinguished Fulbright Chair at Carleton University. He is a member of the American Law Institute, where he serves as Associate Reporter on the Restatement of the Law, Copyright Project.

His acclaimed 2o23 sci-fi novel, Forever, explores the ethics and liability issues surrounding robotics.  He has kindly granted IBIL permission to adapt a section of this gripping and profound work as a class exercise where students can dive into these issues for themselves.

Chris James
Chris James is the General Counsel of a fintech founded by HSBC.  He qualified as a solicitor in 2008 and has spent time in both private practice and in-house.   Chris works across fields such ad-tech, AI, biometrics, cloud, payments, financial services etc. and has worked for banks, telcos, consumer electronics companies and start-ups.  Chris has a keen interest in innovation. His work has been included in the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers Report. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Chris was a systems and web developer for a new media agency. Chris is a Fellow of the Society for Computers and Law and chairs their advisory board.

Naomi Leeds
Naomi Leeds is the lead associate at C. A. Goldberg LLP in New York, working with the firm’s founder in several of the firm’s most ambitious cases against big tech, including one case involving a suicide product sold by an online retailer, four families whose children died from fentanyl-laced pills purchased online, and A.M. v. Omegle, a platform that matches predators and children for video livestream. She’s also worked with the firm’s founder Carrie Goldberg in the case Estate of Bianca Devins v. Oneida County, in which the firm is suing the District Attorney for sharing child sexual abuse material of deceased 17 year old, Bianca Devins.  Naomi work entails putting her clients back in control of their lives, which takes determination, persistence and enormous sensitivity as clients are often in a very vulnerable state. She has a unique insight into how everyday technology is weaponized, and she has proven adept at diffusing volatile abusers, and securing urgent Orders of Protection in an extremely efficient way, often advocating with the family court system to keep her clients safe.   Naomi graduated from Fordham Law School where she cultivated her interest in gender issues and victims’ rights.  She is admitted to practice law in New York and Connecticut.

Jaron Lanier
“Jaron Lanier, the godfather of virtual reality and the sage of all things web, is nicknamed the Dismal Optimist. And there has never been a time we’ve needed his dismal optimism more.” The Guardian, 23.3.2023

Jaron Zepel Lanier is an American computer scientist, visual artist, computer philosophy writer, technologist, futurist and composer of contemporary classical music. Considered a founder of the field of virtual reality Lanier and Thomas Zimmerman left Atari in 1985 to found VPL Research Inc., the first company to sell VR goggled and wired gloves.

From 1997 to 2001, Lanier was the Chief Scientist of Advanced Network and Services which contained the Engineering Office of Internet 2, and served as the Lead Scientist of the 'National Tele-immersion Initiative', a coalition of research universities studying advanced applications for Internet2. The Initiative demonstrated the first prototypes of tele-immersion in 2000 after a three-year development period. From 2001 to 2004, he was visiting scientist at Silicon Graphics Inc., where he developed solutions to core problems in telepresence and tele-immersion. He was also visiting scholar with the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University (1997–2001), a visiting artist with New York University’s Interactive telecommunications Program, and a founding member of the International Institute for Evolution and the Brain.

In 2005, Foreign Policy named Lanier as one of the top 100 Public Intellectuals. In 2010, Lanier was named to the Time 100 list of most influential people.  In 2014, Prospect named Lanier one of the top 50 World Thinkers. In 2018, Wired named Lanier one of the top 25 most influential people over the last 25 years of technological history. 

Lanier is a composer of contemporary classical music and is a collector of rare instruments.  He is also a celebrated author of a host of thought provoking books: https://www.jaronlanier.com/  

 

Fees and Booking

The fees for this course include attendance in-person for the full two day course, plus all lunches and refreshments, and materials. All attendees will receive a Certificate of Participation at the end of the course.

Standard Fee: £600
Concession Fee for Academic Institutions / NGOs / Government workers = £350
Full time student (non-UCL) = £120

Other rates are available for groups, UCL Alumni and sponsors of UCL IBIL. Click on the link below for further details

UCL Laws Students:
We will have some places available free of charge for UCL Laws students in due course. Please look out for an email about sign up in the new year.

Corporates needing to be invoiced for their attendees should click on this link to email Lisa Penfold

Cancellation:
You can cancel your place on the course and receive a full refund up to 7 days before the start of the course (by 09:00 on Monday 5th February 2024). Substitution can be made at any time.

Queries

Please contact Lisa Penfold if you have any queries about this course.