Centre for Public Law (CPL) Podcast

Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age: CIPIL/CPL Lunchtime Seminar - Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) Podcast

Speaker: Professor Jon Penney (Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto) In this talk, Jon Penney explores key themes from his new book Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age (Cambridge University Press, 2025), which examines the increasing weaponization of surveillance, censorship, and new technology to repress and control us. With corporations, governments, and extremists employing big data, artificial intelligence, FRT, cyber-mobs, and other technological threats to limit our rights and freedoms, concerns about chilling effects—or how these activities deter us from exercising our rights—have become urgent. Penney draws on law, privacy theory, and social science to present a new conformity theory that highlights the dangers of chilling effects and their potential to erode democracy and enable a more illiberal future. Following the book’s urgent and timely message, he sheds light on the repressive and conforming effects of technology, state, and corporate power and offers a roadmap of how to respond to their weaponization today and tomorrow. Biography: Jon Penney is a legal scholar and social scientist at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, where he is an Associate Professor and holds the York Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence, Data Governance, and the Law. He is also a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. His award-winning research on privacy, technology, and human rights has received national and international attention, including coverage in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Reuters International, The Guardian, and Le Monde, among others, and has been profiled in WIRED and Harvard Magazine. For more information see: https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-seminars https://www.cpl.law.cam.ac.uk/

'Law, race, rights and the fight against human trafficking and modern slavery'

Professor Parosha Chandran is a distinguished, multi-award winning human rights barrister at One Pump Court Chambers in London, a specialist in modern slavery law, and a world-leading expert on the law relating to human trafficking, including for the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the British Parliament’s work for Commonwealth States. She represents victims of modern slavery and human trafficking in their cases and during her 26-year legal career she has set critical trafficking precedents in the Courts with national and global reach, most recently in a landmark judgment on non-punishment of the European Court of Human Rights in 2021, VCL and AN v UK, which concerned trafficked Vietnamese minors wrongly convicted of cannabis cultivation which their traffickers had required them to perform. She works closely with NGOs and international organisations, provides trafficking training, including for judges, lawyers NGOs and prosecutors, and has advised on domestic and international legislation, including aspects of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. She has published two books, including ‘The Human Trafficking Handbook: Recognising Trafficking and Modern-Day Slavery in the UK’ (LexisNexis, 2011). She is a co-author of the Council of Europe’s comprehensive e-learning course on ‘Combatting Human Trafficking’ (2018 & 2023 edition publication pending). In 2015 she received the ‘Trafficking in Persons Hero Award’ from John Kerry and the Obama administration for her outstanding work in the field. In 2018 she received the distinction of being appointed the first Professor of Practice in Modern Slavery Law at King’s College London where she teaches her own LLM course. In 2021 she represented the UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons in two cases of significance, including in her third party intervention in the Supreme Court in Basfar and Wong, which lifted the diplomatic veil of immunity in a global landmark case concerning a female migrant domestic worker trafficked into the UK for exploitation. Many of her landmark legal cases have involved critical issues concerning race and gender and she highlights these and bring her personal observations on how these impacted victim protection in her talk. This lecture was delivered at the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, on 11 May 2023 as part of the series of Law and Race talks. Supported by the Centre for Public Law: https://www.cpl.law.cam.ac.uk/

Privacy International (Yorke Distinguished Visiting Fellows Seminars)

The Faculty of Law is organising in the 2022-23 academic years three seminars on key public law cases, given by three Yorke Distinguished Visiting Fellows – Lord Carnwath, Lady Hale, and Lord Lloyd-Jones. The first of these seminars took place on Wednesday 16 November and was given by Lord Carnwath, looking at the Privacy International case. Lord Carnwath gave the leading judgment of the majority in the case. Lord Carnwath and Professor Alison Young talked about the impact of the new ouster clause found in section 2 of the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022. Lord Carnwath talked about his judgment in this case and the new legislation, with a brief response from Alison Young. The talk was sponsored by the Centre for Public Law.

'Discrimination, Disproportionality, and Black Deaths in Custody'

Professor Leslie Thomas KC is a human rights and civil liberties barrister. He has appeared in many high-profile cases representing the families of the deceased (Birmingham Pub Bombing Inquests, Grenfell Inquiry, Azelle Rodney, Mark Duggan, Christopher Alder and Sean Rigg). In 2012 he was awarded Legal Aid Barrister of the Year (LALY) and again in 2016 for his work on the Hillsborough disaster. In 2020 he received the award for Outstanding Contribution to D&I in the UK Chambers Bar Awards. He is also former Joint Head of Garden Court Chambers. In 2020 he became the first Black Professor of Law at Gresham College and is a visiting Professor of Law at Goldsmiths. He sits on the Equality Diversity and Inclusion sub-committee for the Inner Temple and the Bar Standards Board Race Equality Task Force. He is also the author of 'Do Right and Fear No One', his autobiography published in 2022. This lecture was delivered at the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, on 13 October 2022 as part of the series of Law and Race talks. Supported by the Centre for Public Law: https://www.cpl.law.cam.ac.uk/

'Addressing Structural Discrimination through International Human Rights Law: the Approach of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination'

Speaker: Professor Mehrdad Payandeh, Member, Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Professor of International Law, European Law, and Public Law at Bucerius Law School Professor Mehrdad Payandeh is Professor of International Law, European Law, and Public Law at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany. His research is focused on international human rights law, anti-discrimination law as well as general international law and constitutional law and theory. Since 2020, he is also a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Law and Race talks organised by Kirsty Hughes and Vandita Khanna at the Faculty of Law on 2 November 2022. Supported by the Centre for Public Law: https://www.cpl.law.cam.ac.uk/