What is the duration of the ICLSPI 2027 conference?

The conference is scheduled to run for two days.

What is the primary focus of the ICLSPI 2027 conference?

The conference focuses on legal, security, and privacy issues, exploring their intersections and implications in the modern world.

International Conference on Legal, Security and Privacy Issues (ICLSPI) 2027

Name: International Conference on Legal, Security and Privacy Issues (ICLSPI) 2027
Start: 2027-02-22T00:00:00Z
End: 2027-02-23T00:00:00Z
Location: Paris

Feb 22–23, 2027Paris, FranceIn-person

Registration open

The International Conference on Legal, Security and Privacy Issues (ICLSPI) 2027 will convene in Paris, FRA, bringing together experts to deliberate on the evolving landscape where legal frameworks intersect with security challenges and privacy imperatives. This event serves as a crucial platform for academics, practitioners, and policymakers to exchange insights on contemporary issues in these interconnected fields. Participants will engage in discussions aimed at fostering a deeper understanding of the complexities inherent in safeguarding digital and physical spaces while upholding fundamental rights.

Committees & topics

Topics
Electronic Signatures and Cross-Border Legal Recognition · Digital Forensics and Electronic Evidence · Workplace Email Monitoring and Employee Privacy · Data Retention and Protection · Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Environment · Contract and Tort Law in the Digital Economy · Virtual Companies and Cross-Border Corporate Personality · E-commerce Law and Cross-Border Digital Trade

Why it matters

In an era characterized by rapid technological advancement and increasing global interconnectedness, the issues of legal compliance, robust security measures, and individual privacy have become paramount. This conference addresses the critical need for interdisciplinary dialogue to navigate the intricate challenges posed by cyber threats, data governance, and the legal implications of emerging technologies. The discussions at ICLSPI 2027 are vital for shaping policies and practices that can effectively balance innovation with protection.

The insights generated from this gathering in FRA will contribute to a more informed global discourse on how societies can adapt their legal and security infrastructures to meet modern demands. By bringing together diverse perspectives, the conference aims to identify best practices and innovative solutions that can be applied across various sectors and jurisdictions. This collaborative approach is essential for building resilient systems that protect both national interests and individual liberties.

How to prepare

Delegates preparing for ICLSPI 2027 should focus on understanding the interplay between national legal frameworks and international security standards. Consider how different countries approach data protection and cybersecurity, and be prepared to discuss the implications of these varied approaches. Reviewing concepts such as "what-is-stakeholder-mapping" and "dynamic-analysis" can provide a robust framework for analyzing the diverse interests at play.

Effective participation will require an understanding of "engagement-strategies" to foster productive dialogue among participants from different backgrounds. Given the international nature of the conference, it is also beneficial to consider how "gender-dynamics-across-cultures" might influence discussions around privacy and security, ensuring a comprehensive and inclusive approach to problem-solving. Preparing case studies or examples from one's own country or region can enrich the discussions and provide practical context to theoretical debates.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

France

France, as the host nation, likely emphasizes a strong regulatory approach to data privacy and cybersecurity, often advocating for robust legal frameworks within the European context.

Role in topic

FRA plays a significant role in shaping European Union data protection policies, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and is a key proponent of digital sovereignty and cybersecurity initiatives. Its perspective will be central to discussions on international legal cooperation and data governance.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Electronic Signatures and Cross-Border Legal Recognition

Electronic signatures emerged as a legal category in the late 1990s as states sought to enable binding online transactions. UNCITRAL's 1996 Model Law on Electronic Commerce and the 2001 Model Law on Electronic Signatures provided the template, followed by the US E-SIGN Act (2000), the EU Electronic Signatures Directive (1999), and its successor, the eIDAS Regulation (2014, updated as eIDAS 2.0 in 2024). These instruments distinguish between simple, advanced, and qualified electronic signatures, with the latter carrying the legal weight of handwritten signatures in many jurisdictions. Despite broad convergence on the principle of non-discrimination against electronic form, cross-border recognition remains fragmented. The EU has built an interoperable trust-service framework, while the United States retains a more technology-neutral, market-led model, and China's Electronic Signature Law (2004, revised 2019) ties validity to state-licensed certification authorities. Disputes have arisen over recognition of foreign trust services, liability of certificate providers, and the evidentiary weight of cloud-based or biometric signatures. Today, debates center on harmonizing standards for remote identity proofing, integrating digital identity wallets (such as the EU Digital Identity Wallet) with signature infrastructure, and ensuring that cross-border e-signature recognition keeps pace with the growth of remote contracting and global supply chains.

Key players

Digital Forensics and Electronic Evidence

Digital forensics arose in the 1980s and 1990s as law enforcement confronted computer-based crime, and matured into a distinct discipline after high-profile cases such as the investigation of the Melissa virus (1999) and post-9/11 counterterrorism investigations. International standards followed, including ISO/IEC 27037 (2012) on the identification and preservation of digital evidence, and the Council of Europe's Budapest Convention on Cybercrime (2001), the principal multilateral instrument addressing cross-border collection of electronic evidence. The core legal challenges concern admissibility, chain of custody, and jurisdictional reach. Cloud computing, end-to-end encryption, and ephemeral messaging have complicated evidence preservation, while mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs) are widely viewed as too slow. The US CLOUD Act (2018) and the EU e-Evidence Regulation (2023) attempt direct cross-border production orders on service providers, raising tensions with data protection regimes and third-country sovereignty. The 2024 UN Convention against Cybercrime added a global layer but drew criticism over human-rights safeguards. Current disputes focus on lawful access to encrypted communications, the use of AI-generated and deepfake evidence, forensic reliability standards, and how to reconcile rapid cross-border evidence requests with GDPR-style protections and due-process guarantees.

Key players

Workplace Email Monitoring and Employee Privacy

Workplace monitoring of electronic communications grew with corporate email adoption in the 1990s and intensified after 2001 amid security and compliance pressures. Jurisdictions diverged sharply: US courts, applying the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (1986) and a reduced employee expectation of privacy on employer systems, generally permit broad monitoring with notice, while European law treats employee communications as protected under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights' Grand Chamber ruling in Barbulescu v. Romania (2017) set a key proportionality test, requiring prior notice, legitimate purpose, and least-intrusive means. The GDPR (2018) and guidance from the European Data Protection Board further constrained monitoring, and national regulators in France, Germany, and Italy have fined employers for covert surveillance. The shift to remote and hybrid work after 2020 accelerated deployment of 'bossware' — keystroke logging, screen capture, and productivity analytics — prompting new regulatory scrutiny. Current debates concern algorithmic management, AI-driven sentiment and productivity analysis, monitoring of personal devices used for work (BYOD), and whether collective-bargaining or works-council consent should be required. The contested boundary is between legitimate employer interests in security and compliance and workers' fundamental rights to privacy and dignity.

Key players

Data Retention and Protection

Data protection law traces to the Council of Europe's Convention 108 (1981) and the OECD Privacy Guidelines (1980), but the modern global benchmark is the EU General Data Protection Regulation (2018), which extended extraterritorial reach and inspired analogues in Brazil (LGPD), India (DPDP Act 2023), and over 130 other jurisdictions. Data retention, by contrast, often pulls in the opposite direction: the EU Data Retention Directive (2006) required telecom providers to retain traffic data for law-enforcement purposes, until the Court of Justice struck it down in Digital Rights Ireland (2014) and reinforced this in Tele2/Watson (2016) and La Quadrature du Net (2020). The Schrems II ruling (2020) invalidated the EU-US Privacy Shield over US surveillance concerns, leading to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (2023), which remains under legal challenge. China's PIPL (2021) and Data Security Law (2021), alongside Russia's data-localization rules, have entrenched a sovereignty-based model that conflicts with the EU's adequacy approach and complicates global data flows. Today's central tensions are between national security and law-enforcement retention mandates and fundamental-rights limits; between cross-border data flows and localization; and between large-scale AI training on personal data and purpose-limitation principles. Negotiations over a UN-level instrument and continued bilateral adequacy decisions will shape the next phase.

Key players

Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Environment

The international IP system is anchored by the Paris (1883) and Berne (1886) Conventions, administered by WIPO, and the WTO TRIPS Agreement (1995), which set minimum standards for copyright, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. The digital era added the WIPO Internet Treaties (1996), the EU Copyright Directive (2001) and its 2019 update introducing Article 17 platform liability, and the US DMCA (1998) notice-and-takedown regime. Patent disputes, particularly over standard-essential patents and pharmaceuticals, have driven sustained North-South tension, including the TRIPS waiver debate during COVID-19. Enforcement has become increasingly extraterritorial, with WTO disputes, ACTA's failed ratification (2012), and the 2024 WIPO Treaty on Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge marking new fault lines. Generative AI now poses unresolved questions on training-data infringement, authorship of AI outputs, and the scope of text-and-data-mining exceptions, with major litigation pending in the US, UK, and EU. Current debates center on AI and copyright, access to essential medicines, protection of traditional knowledge and geographical indications, trade-secret protection in cross-border supply chains, and the role of platform liability in combating online piracy and counterfeiting.

Key players

Contract and Tort Law in the Digital Economy

Contract and tort doctrines, rooted in centuries of common and civil law tradition, have been stretched by digital commerce, platform intermediation, and algorithmic decision-making. The UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG, 1980) and the UN Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts (2005) provided baseline rules, while courts globally have grappled with the enforceability of clickwrap and browsewrap agreements, online consumer protection, and the allocation of platform liability for user-caused harm. Tort law faces parallel pressures: the EU has modernized its Product Liability Directive (2024) to cover software and AI, and introduced a proposed AI Liability Directive to ease evidentiary burdens for plaintiffs. US courts continue to interpret Section 230 immunity for online intermediaries, while the UK Supreme Court's Lloyd v. Google (2021) ruling narrowed mass data-breach claims. Cross-border enforcement under the Hague Judgments Convention (2019) and the Choice of Court Convention (2005) remains uneven. Key current questions concern liability for autonomous systems and AI decisions, smart-contract enforceability, consumer protection in subscription and dark-pattern contexts, and the proper jurisdiction and applicable law for online torts including defamation, data breaches, and platform-mediated harms.

Key players

Virtual Companies and Cross-Border Corporate Personality

The concept of the 'virtual company' — fully online, often distributed across jurisdictions, sometimes lacking a clear physical seat — has grown from early internet startups to today's remote-first firms and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Estonia's e-Residency programme (2014) was the first state initiative to offer remote company formation to non-residents, followed by similar moves in Lithuania, Portugal, and the UAE. DAOs gained limited legal personality through Wyoming's DAO LLC Act (2021), Vermont's BBLLC statute, and the Marshall Islands' DAO LLC Act (2022). Core legal challenges include determining tax residence and permanent establishment under the OECD/G20 BEPS framework and the 2021 Two-Pillar Solution, applying anti-money-laundering and beneficial-ownership requirements (FATF Recommendation 24), and reconciling employment, consumer, and data-protection law when a company has no clear physical nexus. The collapse of FTX (2022) and similar cases highlighted regulatory gaps in jurisdictions hosting nominally virtual corporate structures. Current debates focus on whether DAOs should have full legal personality, how to attribute liability in headless organizations, the role of digital-nomad and e-residency regimes in tax competition, and harmonization of cross-border company law to prevent regulatory arbitrage while preserving legitimate innovation.

Key players

E-commerce Law and Cross-Border Digital Trade

E-commerce law took shape through the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Commerce (1996), the EU E-Commerce Directive (2000), and the US framework combining the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act and sectoral consumer-protection rules. The WTO Work Programme on Electronic Commerce (1998) maintained a moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions, regularly renewed but increasingly contested by developing countries seeking fiscal space. The EU's Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act (both in force 2024) introduced far-reaching obligations on platforms, while the WTO Joint Statement Initiative on E-commerce reached a stabilized text in 2024 among more than 90 members, though India and South Africa remain outside. Regional instruments — the African Continental Free Trade Area Digital Trade Protocol (2024), the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA), and CPTPP e-commerce chapters — are filling gaps left by multilateral deadlock. Disputes persist over data localization, source-code disclosure, cross-border data flows, and platform taxation. Current flashpoints include the future of the WTO e-commerce duty moratorium, treatment of digital products under trade rules, consumer protection against cross-border fraud and counterfeits, platform gatekeeper regulation, and balancing open digital trade against legitimate public-policy objectives such as privacy, security, and industrial policy.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for International Conference on Legal, Security and Privacy Issues (ICLSPI) 2027.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Supreme Court's Voting Rights Impact on 2026

Trump's Federal Election Strategy

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Howard Lutnick's Senate Testimony on 2027 Bud

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Conflict Resolution

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

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By committee

Frequently asked questions

International Conference on Legal, Security and Privacy Issues (ICLSPI) 2027

Feb 22–23, 2027Paris, FranceIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Electronic Signatures and Cross-Border Legal Recognition · Digital Forensics and Electronic Evidence · Workplace Email Monitoring and Employee Privacy · Data Retention and Protection · Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Environment · Contract and Tort Law in the Digital Economy · Virtual Companies and Cross-Border Corporate Personality · E-commerce Law and Cross-Border Digital Trade

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

France

France, as the host nation, likely emphasizes a strong regulatory approach to data privacy and cybersecurity, often advocating for robust legal frameworks within the European context.

Role in topic