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Professor Ian Walden, BA, MA, PhD, Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales

Ian

Professor of Information and Communications Law

Email: i.n.walden@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7882 8086
Room Number: Lincoln's Inn Fields

Profile

Dr Ian Walden is Professor of Information and Communications Law and was Director of the Centre for Commercial Law Studies from September 2018 - September 2022. His publications include Media Law and Practice (2009), Free and Open Source Software (2013), Computer Crimes and Digital Investigations (2nd ed., 2016) and Telecommunications Law and Regulation (5th ed., 2018). Ian has been a visiting professor at the universities of Texas, Melbourne and KU Leuven. Ian has been involved in law reform projects for the World Bank, European Commission, Council of Europe, Commonwealth and UNCTAD, as well as numerous individual states. Ian was an ‘expert nationaux détaché’ to the European Commission (1995-96); Board Member and Trustee of the Internet Watch Foundation (2004-09); on the Executive Board of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (2010-12); the Press Complaints Commission (2009-14); a member of the RUSI Independent Surveillance Review (2014-15); a member of the Code Adjudication Panel at the Phone-paid Services Authority (2016-21); a member of the European Commission Expert Group to support the application of the GDPR (2017-21), and a Non-Executive Board Member of the Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority (2020- ). Ian is a solicitor and Of Counsel to Baker McKenzie. Ian leads Queen Mary’s qLegal initiative and is a principal investigator on the Cloud Legal Project.

Postgraduate Teaching

Teaches postgraduate courses on the LLM programmes in London and Paris, and the Technology, Media and Telecommunications Law Online LLM. The courses he teaches on include EU Data Protection Law, Cybercrime, Telecommunications and Legal Tech and Public Affairs Advocacy.

In 2022, the Cloud Legal Project launched on Coursera an innovative online specialisation in Cloud Computing Law. Ian Walden is an instructor in the weeks that cover competition law and law enforcement access to data.

Research

Research Interests:

Ian Walden's current research interests are cybercrime and cross-border access to electronic evidence, and communications law.

Ian is a principal investigator on the Cloud Legal Project, funded by Microsoft, and a joint research initiative with Cambridge Computing Lab, the Microsoft Cloud Computing Research Centre.

Ian also prepared the report ‘Legal and Regulatory Implications of Disruptive Technologies in Emerging Market Economies’ (2018) for the World Bank Legal Department’s Thematic Working Group on Technology and Innovation in Development. 

Examples of research funding:

Project entitled Re-designing complex contracts: integrating business relationships and law, funded through a gift from Accenture.

Publications

Recent publications include:

Books

  • Telecommunications Law and Regulation, 5th edition, OUP (2018) - Sole editor and author of Chapter 1, ‘Telecommunications Law and Regulation: An Introduction’; Chapter 4, ‘European Union Communications Law’, Chapter 8 ‘Access and Interconnection’, Chapter 13, ‘Communcations Privacy’ and Chapter 16, ‘The International Regulatory Regime’.
  • Computer Crimes and Digital Investigations, 2nd edition, OUP (2016)
  • Free and Open Source Software: Policy, Law and Regulation, OUP (2013) – Joint editor and sole author of Chapter 1, ‘Open Source as Philosophy, Methodology and Commerce: Using Law with Attitude’.
  • Media Law and Practice, OUP (2009, 2nd ed. forthcoming 2019), Joint editor and sole author of two chapters.

Chapters in Books

  • “Obtaining digital evidence under UK law”, (with Elif Mendos Kuskonmaz), a chapter in The Cambridge Handbook of Digital Evidence in Criminal Investigations, CUP, forthcoming 2024.
  • “Getting Critical: Making sense of the EU cybersecurity framework for cloud providers” (with Dave Michels), a chapter in Legal Developments in Cybersecurity and Related fields, Springer, forthcoming 2024.
  • Authored and co-authored 6 chapters in Cloud Computing Law (ed. Millard), 2nd edition, OUP, 2021.

Articles

  • “Beyond ‘Complacency and Panic’: Will the NIS Directive improve the cybersecurity of critical national infrastructure?”, (with Dave Michels) European Law Review, February 2020.
  • “The Sky is Falling! – Responses to the ‘Going Dark’ problem”, pp. 901-907, Computer Law and Security Review, vol. 34, no. 4, 2018.
  • “Brexit and the peculiar case of the telecommunications sector”, pp. 200-204, Computer and Telecommunications Law Review, vol. 22, no. 8, 2016.
  • “Placing the state in the cloud: Issues of data governance and public procurement” pp.683-695, (with Gleeson), Computer Law and Security Review, vol. 32, no.5, 2016.
  • “Responsibility & Machine Learning: Part of a Process” (with Singh, Crowcroft, and Bacon)(October 27, 2016). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2860048
  • “Contracting for the ‘Internet of Things’: Looking into the Nest” (with Noto La Diega), European Journal of Law and Technology, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2016 (http://ejlt.org/article/view/450)(SSRN downloads: 1,216).
  • “Policy, legal and regulatory implications of a Europe-only cloud”, (with Kuan Hon, Millard, Singh & Crowcroft) International Journal of Law and Information Technology, 2016, 24, 251-278.
  • “Knowledge transfer in commercial law”, (with John Cummins & Patrick Cahill) InImpact: The Journal of Innovation Impact, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2014, pp. 163-176.
  • “It’s a Jungle out there: Cloud Computing, Standards and the Law” (with Gleeson), European Journal of Law and Technology, vol. 5, no. 2, 2014.
  • “Negotiating cloud contracts – Looking at clouds from both sides now” (with Hon & Millard), 16 Stanford Technology Law Review, 81, 2012 (SSRN downloads: 2,328).
  • “Broadcasting privacy”, (with Lorna Woods) (2011) 3(1) Journal of Media Law 117–141.
  • “Ensuring competition in the Clouds: The role of Competition law?” (with Laíse Bornico), ERA Forum (2011) 12, pp. 265-285.
  • “The Internet: Access Denied Controlled!” (with Martin Wasik) [2011] Crim. L.R. Issue 5.

Supervision

Ian currently supervises PhD students in the areas of freedom of expression; privacy and the media; telecommunications; cybercrime and information security.

Public Engagement

Current

  • Ian leads Queen Mary’s qLegal initiative
  • A Non-Executive Board Member of the Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority (2020- )

Past

  • Member of the European Commission’s Multistakeholder Expert Group to support the application of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (since 2017)
  • Legal Member of the Code Adjudication Panel at Phone-paid Services Authority (PSA) (since 2016).
  • 2014-15: Appointed by the Deputy Prime Minister to the Royal United Services Institute’s Independent Surveillance Review and joint author of ‘A Democratic Licence to Operate’, whose recommendations were taken into account in the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.
  • 2013-14: Member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on Cloud Computing Contracts (Commission Decision 2013/C 174/04 of 18 July 2013), whose work was acknowledged by the Commission as feeding into a proposed Directive ‘on certain aspects concerning contracts for the supply of digital content’.
  • 2009-14: Lay Member of the Press Complaints Commission 
  • 2010-12: Member of the Executive Board of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS)
  • 2004-09: Public Interest Board Member of the Internet Watch Foundation (Vice-Chair from 2006 and Interim Chair January-April 2009).

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