Aleš Završnik was a chair of the programme and organizing committee of the International scientific conference "Spy in the Sky: Regulatory issues of drones and unmanned aerial systems", organised at the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana, May 23-24, 2013, Ljubljana. The papers presented at the conference will be published in an edited book by the Springer publishing house at the end of 2014 according to the signed Publishing agreement. The Student Photography Contest “Who is watching you?” ended at the conference with an award ceremony for the best photograph. The conference had a significant impact on raising awareness about new types of surveillance in the general public, e.g. National Television “RTV Slovenija 1” reported about the conference in the central news show “TV Dnevnik” (URL: http://ava.rtvslo.si/predvajaj/o-zakonitosti-napadov-z-brezpilotnimi-letali/ava2.167277345/; and daily newspaper “Dnevnik” published an interview with the plenary speaker Professor Pablo Mendes de Leon, Director of the International Institute of Air and Space Law of Leiden University (URL: http://www.dnevnik.si/ljudje/prof-pablo-mendes-de-leon).
B.01 Organiser of a scientific meeting
Aleš Završnik collaborated in COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) Action IS0807 »Living in Surveillance Societies« as a Management Committee member and a member of the Fourth Working Group, till May 2013, (http://www.liss-cost.eu/). He attended at several annual meetings, collaborated with European researchers in preparing a research project for the Security call of the Framework Programme 7, organized and contributed a scientific article to special section of the Journal of Contemporary European Research (issue 1, 2013), organized a meeting of the fourth Working Group in Ljubljana. Aleš Završnik started to collaborate in COST Action TU1203 “Crime Prevention through Urban Design and Planning” as a Management Committee member (the action started at the end of 2012). Part of assignments in the project were preparations of the national bibliography report on the subject and drafting a report on video surveillance in Slovenia (to be published separately in Revija za kriminalistiko in kriminologijo).
D.01 Chairing over/coordinating (international and national) projects
Personal mobility grant of the Research Council of Norway »Yggdrasil mobility programme – a young guest and doctoral researchers’ annual scholarship for investigation and learning in Norway« granted by the Research Council of Norway to Aleš Završnik (the success rate of applicants in 2011/2012 was 34 percent) enabled Završnik to visit the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the Faculty of Law University of Oslo. The grant was awarded for the project »Surveillance and Crime Control« (project no. 210792) for the period January – June 2012.
B.05 Guest lecturer at an institute/university
Technical forms of surveillance, enabled by developments in microelectronics, databases and computer networks, have increased the monitoring of our daily lives and triggered a surge in “surveillance studies”. Their central concern has been “digitalised” surveillance that allows agencies to accumulate, preserve and organise data much more efficiently, creating sensitive personal data databases and using tools such as “data mining” for “phishing” expeditions and “predictive software” to forecast crimes yet to be committed. This has led to legitimate concerns about systematic undermining of the rule of law, but has somehow neglected the role played by the rules imposed by the financial markets. New “pre-emptive” orientation in the security and control domain protect environments characterised by social, political and economic inequalities and reinforce the conditions already at work there, to the detriment of social equality, justice and social cohesion. The paper will focus on the contemporary socio-economic developments in Central and Eastern Europe and show that the post-socialist transition has been a mixed blessing in terms of proportionate and legitimate surveillance. Besides signs of progress, e.g. the submission of the intelligence services to the rule of law and adoption of legislation regulating the access to public information, there have been signs of the opposite, e.g. the systematic undermining of the state’s abilities to enforce the rule of law, a failure to modernise the criminal justice system, a failure in establishing strong market regulatory agencies and erosion of public trust in the criminal justice system. The paper will try to show how the European Union itself, which Central and Eastern European countries aspired to join, has moved towards surveillance regimes that stir authoritarian memories in nations whose socialist past is being systematically demonised.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 1655118Member of the Editorial Board of the »Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology« (since 2010). Brno: Masaryk University, Faculty of Law. ISSN 1802-5951. The engagement encompassed peer-review of articles submitted to the journal and other preparatory tasks in a submitting journal to the scientific indexes (e.g. for the IBZ Degruyter index). (C.04 Editorial board of an international magazine) Membership in the Scientific Committee of the conferences »Cyberspace 2011«, »Cyberspace 2012« and »Cyberspace 2013« that precede annual editions of the »Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology«. The engagement encompassed the preparation of sections on cybercrime and introduction of a new section on internet surveillance; reviewing of paper proposals and chairing the sections. Published at: http://cyberspace.muni.cz/search.php?rsvelikost=uvod&rstext=all-phpRSall&rstema=10&stromhlmenu=10 (D.03 Membership in foreign/international boards/committees) Giving lectures at the Cyberspace conferences at the Faculty of Law, Masaryk University Brno, e.g. a contribution of a paper »Resistance and critique of surveillance« at the 10th International conference Cyberspace 2012, 30 November - 1 December 2012, Masaryk University, Brno. Brno, 2012. [COBISS.SI-ID 1599566]. (B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference)
C.04 Editorial board of an international magazine