Privacy vs Security: Where does the balance lie?

Given the explosive revelations made by Edward Snowden, there is greater public awareness of government surveillance and, consequently, calls for more transparency and accountability. The UCT Law Faculty is hosting a panel on this issue on Weds 3rd October at 17h30.

The panel includes Sir Adrian Fulford, Investigatory Powers Commissioner in the UK; Advocate Pansy Tlakula, South African Information Regulator; Professor Jane Duncan, University of Johannesburg; and Peter Carter QC, whose practice is primarily criminal law. This panel of distinguished experts will provide insights into the UK system or surveillance and the criticisms of the legislation and also the South African experience. The event will be moderated by Judge Dennis Davis.

RSVP to gaby.ritchie@uct.ac.za for catering purposes. PLEASE JOIN US!

Short Biographies of panel members, and of the Panel Convenor, Dame Linda Dobbs

Sir Adrian Fulford

Sir Adrian Fulford was called to the Bar in 1978 and he took silk (became a Queen’s Counsel) in 1994. He was made a Recorder of the Crown Court in 1995, and was re-appointed in 2001 before becoming a judge of the High Court on 21 November 2002. He was assigned to the Queen’s Bench Division and subsequently presided over a number of high-profile cases. He was elected to serve as one of the 18 judges of the International Criminal Court in 2003 for a term of nine years, and was assigned to the Trial Division. He was sworn into office on 11 March 2003. Until he began presiding over the Lubanga Case (the ICC’s first trial) in 2005, he continued working as a High Court judge, presiding over a number of high-profile cases, including the 21/7 London bombers. He was a presiding judge of the South Eastern Circuit from 2009 until he was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal on 10 May 2013, and became the Deputy Senior Presiding Judge for England and Wales on 1 January 2015. He then served as the Senior Presiding Judge from 1 January 2016 until 31 March 2017. He was the judge in charge of IT and he led for the judiciary on HMCTS Reform. He had responsibility for overseeing issues concerning vulnerable witnesses and sat on the HMCTS Board and the Judicial Executive Board.

On 27 February 2017, Sir Adrian was appointed to the role of Investigatory Powers Commissioner to provide judicial oversight of the use of investigatory powers by public authorities. He remains a Lord Justice of Appeal.

Peter Carter QC

Peter Carter undertakes criminal law work with the principal emphasis upon defending in cases of fraud, terrorism, homicide and defendants who are victims of human trafficking. He has acted in public inquiries and in extradition cases. He has prosecuted some of the leading insider dealing cases for the Financial Conduct Authority. He advises organizations and companies concerning issues of human trafficking and compliance with international standards of good corporate governance on human rights and trans-national criminal law.

Carter was a specialist adviser to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the draft Modern Slavery Bill.

His expertise in legal professional privilege led to him being appointed to chair the Bar Council working group dealing with the Investigatory Powers Bill for which he (jointly with Bankim Thanki, QC) produced a guide to legal professional privilege.

A visiting professor of law at Birkbeck, University of London, Carter has taught advocacy and the use of international human rights standards as part of the rule of law in several Caribbean jurisdictions, South Africa, Malawi, Kenya, Morocco, Oman and Singapore as well as in the UK.  He regularly presents lectures on international human rights law and ethics and has contributed occasionally to journals and textbooks.

He joined Doughty Street Chambers in 2015.

Advocate Pansy Tlakula

Advocate Pansy Tlakula is the Chairperson of the Information Regulator of South Africa. She holds a BProc degree from the University of the North (now University of Limpopo), an LLB degree from the University of the Witwatersrand and an LLM degree from Harvard University. In 2006 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Legal Studies by the Vaal University of Technology.

Adv Tlakula has held high profile positions in academia, and public and private sectors. These include Senior Law Lecturer at the then University of Bophuthatswana (now North West University), National Director of the Black Lawyers Association, one of the founding Commissioners of the South Africa Human Rights Commission, Chairperson of the Board of the National Credit Regulator, Chairperson of Council of the then University of the North West (now North West University) and the Chancellor of the Vaal University of Technology. She was also Independent Non-Executive Director of the Bidvest Group Limited and the Chief Electoral Officer and later Chairperson of the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC). Tlakula is the former Chairperson of the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights (AU Organ) and its Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa.

Professor Jane Duncan

Jane Duncan is a Professor in the Department of Journalism, Film and Television at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). With a BA, Hons, MA and PhD in Fine Arts, Prof Duncan previously held the Chair in Media and Information Society in the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University. Jane worked for the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) for 15 years, and was its Executive Director for eight of those years. It was during this time that her interest in freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and the right to protest developed, and during which she successfully established FXI as a Law Clinic. Through the FXI, she was involved in and/or provided funding for several cases that were to define freedom of expression jurisprudence. These include South African Breweries International vs. Laugh it Off Promotions (the ‘Black Labour, White Guilt’ case); MEC for Education KwaZulu/ Natal and Others v Pillay (the ‘Nose Stud’ case); a Constitutional Court case that legalised the establishment of trade unions in the military. At the FXI, Jane engaged in advocacy in Parliament on several laws, including the Broadcasting Bill, Broadcasting Amendment Bill, Media Development and Diversity Agency Bill, Independent Communications Authority of South Africa Bill, Independent Communications Authority of South Africa Amendment Bill, the Film and Publications Bill and the Film and Publications Amendment Bill.   

Amongst her many other achievements is her founding of the Media Policy and Democracy Project, to encourage participatory media and communications policy. She is a member of the Right 2 Know Campaign (R2K), and involved in its work on secrecy and securitisation, the right to protest and media freedom. She also represented Higher Education South Africa at public hearings held by Parliament’s National Council of Provinces, on the implications of the Protection of State Information Bill (or the ‘Secrecy Bill’) for academic freedom.

Her research interests have been shaped by her work in civil society, and her research work is both informed by and informs activist work. She is author of ‘The Rise of the Securocrats: the Case of South Africa’, published by Jacana Media in 2014; ‘Protest Nation: the Right to Protest in South Africa’, published by UKZN Press in 2016; and ‘Stopping the Spies: Constructing and Resisting the Surveillance State in South Africa’, published by Wits University Press in 2018.

In June 2018, she was appointed to the Presidential Review Panel on Intelligence, set up by President Cyril Ramaphosa to assess the mandate, organisational capacity and integrity of South Africa’s State Security Agency (SSA).

Judge Dennis Davis

Judge Davis attained his law qualifications at UCT and Cambridge, began teaching at UCT in 1977, and was appointed as Chair of Commercial Law in 1989. Between 1991 and 1997 he served as Director of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at Wits, holding joint appointments at Wits and UCT during these years.

Since his appointment to the Bench, he has continued to teach constitutional law and tax law at UCT where he is an Hon. Professor of law. Judge Davis was a technical advisor to the South African Constitutional Assembly that wrote the interim (1993) and final (1996) Constitutions of the Republic of South Africa. He is also a member of the Commission of Enquiry into the Tax Structure of South Africa. Davis is regularly invited to participate in conferences at leading world universities and has in recent years been a visiting scholar at the Universities of Cambridge, Florida, Toronto and Harvard. Judge Davis has hosted two television programmes – “Future Imperfect”, an award-winning programme on current affairs, and “Judge for Yourself”, focused on constitutional issues. He is a regular contributor to debate in public forums and the media on issues of human rights, politics, religion and related matters of contemporary interest.

Dame Linda Dobbs

Following a successful career at the Bar, in October 2004, Dame Linda became the first person of colour to hold the office of high court judge in the UK. At the Bar she was a member of, and chaired, a number of committees, including the Race Relations, Equal Opportunities, International, Professional Conduct and Professional Standard Committees. In 2003 Dame Linda became the Chairman of the Criminal Bar Association where she set up its first Equality and Diversity sub-committee. Whilst on the High Court Bench she was the Senior Liaison Judge for Diversity, Chair of the Magisterial Committee of the Judicial Studies Board and Chair of the International Committee of the Judicial College and a Fawcett Commissioner.

Dame Linda is a contributing and consultant editor to a number of legal publications.  She has been involved in the training of lawyers and judges both in the UK and internationally for over 20 years and is the Director of Training at the Judicial Institute for Africa, based at the University of Cape Town where she is an honorary professor.

She has advised, assisted, participated and devised training in many areas, including amongst others: Professional & judicial ethics; human rights; drug trafficking/money laundering/asset seizure; judge-craft, including judgment writing and case management; and equal treatment and vulnerable witnesses.

She has worked in/had working connections with – Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Bahamas, Jamaica, Guyana, St Lucia and the Eastern Caribbean, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, Sierra Leone, South Africa, India, China, France, the ICTY in the Hague, Georgia, Russia, Tunisia, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe and The Seychelles. Clients include British Council, Commonwealth Secretariat, DFID, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, International Bar Association, Inter-American Development Bank, Noraid, UNDP, USAID, ABA, and Lawyers without Borders.

Dame Linda holds 7 honorary doctorates; is a Fellow of the Judicial College; was a member of the Court of Governors at the London School of Economics from 2006 – 2015; and was chair of its Ethics Policy Committee from 2012 to 2015. She is a patron of a number of charities (including two in Sierra Leone and two in South Africa); she also sits on a number of advisory committees. She is the President of ILFA (International Lawyers for Africa) and chair of the UK-Sierra Leone Pro Bono Network. She has been named in the past as one of Britain’s most powerful black women and one of the 100 Great Black Britons and she has featured regularly in the Power 100 List of Influential Black Britons.

In 2013 Dame Linda stepped down early from the High Court Bench to pursue her various interests, which includes the training of judges and lawyers internationally (in particular, in the Caribbean and Africa), and supporting the charities with which she has connections. Other areas of expertise include mediation, conducting investigations, inquiries and needs assessments and other consultancy work.

Her current roles include Pro Chancellor of the University of Surrey; Senior Fellow at SOAS; Advisory Board of the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics; Independent Assessor for Miscarriages of Justice Compensation; Judicial Commissioner to the Investigatory Powers Commission; acting judge of the Grand Court of the Grand Cayman; member of the panel of the Turks and Caicos Appeal court. She is presently conducting a Review for Lloyds Banking Group.