Launch of Information Law Reports
The Information Law Reports launched on 14 July 2011, with the following announcement on 11KBW’s website: Leading chambers 11KBW and legal publisher Justis Publishing are collaborating in a first for...
View ArticlePRIVATE EMAILS AND TEXTS SUBJECT TO FOIA
Following the emergence earlier this year that Department for Education officials had, apparently routinely, used personal email accounts for the conducting of official business, the ICO has considered...
View ArticleARTICLE 8 CHALLENGE TO ENHANCED CRIMINAL RECORDS REGIME FAILS (AT FIRST...
Yesterday, the High Court(Kenneth Parker J) gave judgment in R (T) v (1) Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, (2) Secretary of State for the Home Department (Secretary of State for Justice an...
View ArticleImportant new privacy judgment: police retention of protestor’s data not an...
The Admin Court (Gross LJ and Irwin J) has handed down judgment this week in Catt v Association of Chief Police Officers and Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [2012] EWHC 1471 (Admin). It is an...
View ArticlePolice Surveillance – New tribunal decision
Earlier this month Robin Hopkins blogged on a recent admin court judgment applying Article 8 to the police’s act of retaining data on a protestor (see his post on the Catt case here). This week the...
View ArticleImportant developments in surveillance law: RIPA and CCTV
Important changes to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 come into force from 1 November 2012, thanks to the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (Commencement No. 2) Order 2012, passed last...
View ArticleInternet traffic data and debt collection: privacy implications
Mr Probst was a subsriber to the internet service provider (ISP) Verizon. He failed to pay his bill. A company called ‘nexnet’, the assignee of Verizon’s debt, sought to collect the sums due. In doing...
View ArticleRedacting for anonymisation: Article 8 v Article 10 in child protection context
Panopticon has reported recently on the ICO’s new Code of Practice on Anonymisation: see Rachel Kamm’s post here. That Code offers guidance for ensuring data protection-compliant disclosure in...
View ArticleCPR disclosure applications: ignore the DPA; balance Articles 6 and 8 instead
It is increasingly common for requests for disclosure in pre-action or other litigation correspondence to include a subject access request under section 7 of the Data Protection Act 1998. Litigants...
View ArticleSupreme Court: Articles 3, 6 and 8 ECHR in child protection PII case
There have been a number of important privacy judgments in recent weeks, particularly concerning Article 8 ECHR in cases with child protection elements. I have blogged on two Court of Appeal judgments....
View ArticlePrivacy and data protection developments in 2013: Google, Facebook, Leveson...
Data protection law was designed to be a fundamental and concrete dimension of the individual’s right to privacy, the primary safeguard against misuse of personal information. Given those ambitions, it...
View ArticleGoogle: autocomplete and the frontiers of privacy
Unsurprisingly, the frontiers of privacy and data protection law are often explored and extended by reference to what Google does. Panopticon has, for example, covered disputes over Google Street View...
View ArticleT v Manchester goes to the Supreme Court
One of the most important privacy judgments of the year thus far has been that of the Court of Appeal in R (T & others) v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester & others [2013] EWCA Civ 25, on...
View ArticleRIPA: hacked voicemails and undercover officers
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) has featured prominently in the news in recent weeks, both as regards undercover police officers/“covert human intelligence sources” and as...
View ArticleGoogle and data protection: no such thing as the ‘right to be forgotten’
Chris Knight has blogged recently about enforcement action against Google by European Data Protection authorities (but not yet the UK’s ICO). I blogged last month about a German case (BGH, VI ZR 269/12...
View ArticlePrism and Tempora: Privacy International commences legal action
Panopticon has reported in recent weeks that, following the Edward Snowden/Prism disclosures, Liberty has brought legal proceedings against the UK’s security bodies. This week, Privacy International...
View ArticleAnonymity: publication and open justice
The tension between transparency and individual privacy is part of what makes information rights such a fascinating and important area. When it comes to high-public interest issues involving particular...
View ArticleOne hundred years of solicitude
In 2004, a man known as TD was arrested for an alleged sexual assault. He was interviewed twice. No further action was taken. The biometric data was in due course destroyed, as will be the case with...
View ArticleRefusal to destroy part of a ‘life story’ justified under Article 8(2) ECHR
The High Court of Justice (Northern Ireland) has today given judgment In the matter of JR60’s application for judicial review [2013] NIQB 93. The applicant sought to challenge the right of the two...
View ArticleFingerprints requirement for passport does not infringe data protection rights
Mr Schwarz applied to his regional authority, the city of Bochum, for a passport. He was required to submit a photograph and fingerprints. He did not like the fingerprint part. He considered it unduly...
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