Short Report: Telemedicus Summer Conference on “Surveillance and the Law”

The first two-day summer conference of Telemedicus e.V. took place in Berlin on August 30 and 31, 2014 . Whereas the summer convention of Telemedicus in 2013 still resembled a relaxed larger barbecue fest, this year’s event convened established representatives from the fields of academia and legal practice, as well as civil society for a two-day conference with a comprehensive programme.
The fact that the event enjoyed great popularity, cannot only be attributed to the low participation hurdles (no registration fee) and the well-chosen venue, but especially the hot yet very ambitious topic of “surveillance and the law “.
The revelations of the past year have brought attention to political and technical aspects of IT surveillance, while many legal aspects remained covert. The conference made up for this in many ways and focused on the main contact points of the fields of surveillance and law. This entailed European and German Data Protection Law (Data Retention and General Data Protection Regulation) as well as questions of crime investigation and intelligence surveillance.

Please note: A more detailed conference report was published in German in the Journal Kommunikation & Recht 2014, Vol. 10, p. V-VI.

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Hackney anti-surveillance micro-bots by Matt Biddulph