Stocker v Stocker: dictionaries, domestic violence, and defamation
The UK Supreme Court has ruled that a woman was not liable in defamation to her ex-husband for writing public messages on Facebook stating that “he tried to strangle me”. In doing so the decision (which seems to bolster the right to ...
The Draft Investigatory Powers Bill: A (Somewhat) Different Balance Between Privacy and Security
Recently it seems as though you can hardly get away from government mass surveillance programs (no pun intended). They even make an appearance in the latest James Bond film (as sinister tools of the ‘New World Order’, naturally). The ...
The Safe Harbour Decision May be a Reaction Against the Snowdon Revelations, but the Direction of Travel is Clear
Data protection law, once the preserve of tragic anoraks with too much time on their hands (in the words of one prominent practitioner) has in recent months become a powerful weapon in the arsenal of media lawyers. It has also become ...
R (Davis): Rights in Communications Data and Constitutional Evolution
Much ink has been spilt of late over the mass surveillance programs run by western intelligence agencies. A separate, but related, matter of concern for privacy campaigners has been legislation permitting the government to order the ...
The ‘Anderson Report’ on Surveillance Powers Fudges the Issues, but its Findings Should be Implemented
Pressure on the government to reform the use of surveillance powers within the UK has recently ratcheted up another notch. A few months ago the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC) and the Interception of ...
Tentative Reform of State Surveillance Powers in the UK
Rumblings of discontent have been heard from the supervisory bodies that are entrusted with providing oversight of surveillance operations by UK intelligence agencies. While these demonstrate that the security services do not get ...
Privacy, Data Protection and Police Records
Can the retention of records by the police relating to acts that occurred in public be contrary to the right to privacy? Such a matter was recently considered by the UK Supreme Court in R (Catt and T) v Commissioner of Police of the ...
Constitutional Court of South Africa: Blunting the Impact of Electoral Law on Freedom of Expression
The Constitutional Court of South Africa has undertaken a robust defence of freedom of expression at the time of an election following litigation between the governing party and the official opposition in Democratic Alliance v African ...
The Legality of Mass Surveillance Operations
A court which isn’t a court in name rules on the legality of a government mass surveillance program that may or may not exist. That about sums up the Kafkaesque world inhabited by the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal in Liberty v ...
Reporting Restrictions in Criminal Cases Involving Juveniles
On 3 November 2014 Will Cornick was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years imprisonment for the murder of his teacher Ann Maguire, after stabbing her in front of her own class. Aged 15 when he committed the crime, he expressed no remorse ...
The Duty of National Authorities to Investigate Allegations of Torture
Proponents of universal jurisdiction for international crimes will be gratified by the judgment of the Constitutional Court of South Africa in the case of National Commissioner of the South African Police Service v Southern African ...
A House Divided: Grappling with Affirmative Action in South Africa
It doesn’t require much imagination to see that affirmative action policies implemented for the good of society exact a toll on the individuals who lose out. This is especially true in South Africa, which enshrines the use of such ...
