Category: Data Protection

Readers know that I have always said that the Data Protection Regulation will fail, mainly because of disagreements between Member States over content. However, my analysis was before the Snowdon whistle-blowing disclosures as to how personal data, processed by corporate American (e.g. Google, Facebook etc), are regularly harvested by the USA’s National Security Agency (NSA). I still think the Regulation will fail but I am now less certain; in the run up to Xmas, the position will become clear. But

Put October 8th in the diary; it might be an interesting Parliamentary day for data protection aficionados. It is the day when Operation Millipede might begin to realise its potential to out-perform Leveson for headlines concerning “shock-horror”, “privacy busting” exploits. On the other hand, Government indifference could make it a damp-squib. Operation Millipede is the name coined by the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) for one of its investigations; it involved blagging by private investigators where, worryingly, some of the

Let us suppose you are a hugely wealthy celebrity trying to secure your mansion: electronic locks, CCTV on the gates, unbreakable doors and windows, secure panic room, electronic movement alarms covering the acres of garden and all the other high-tech security paraphernalia. Who would you go to for advice? Well I just have had a brilliant idea. Why not go to the police and ask them “I need secure my home; who is the best house burglar on your books so

As you are probably aware, Mr. Miranda is the partner of the Guardian journalist who has been using the documentation provided by whistleblower Mr Snowdon to publicise mass surveillance by the NSA and GCHQ.  Last Sunday, under the Terrorism Act 2000, he was detained at Heathrow for nine hours whilst in transit from Germany to Brazil; his equipment was also seized (laptop, phone etc). I thought I would do a detailed blog on the interplay between data protection and terrorism law as it

I have just realised the Irish revisions to the text of the European Commission’s Data Protection Regulation anticipates Member States enacting legislation that requires data processors to disclose personal data, possibly for any exemption specified in the Regulation, without the knowledge or consent of the data controller and, if needed, contrary to any instructions given by the data controller. The possibility of such disclosures extends well beyond the “NSA and PRISM” circumstances exposed by whistle-blower, Mr. Snowden. Indeed, I would argue that

Yesterday (Friday; 26th July), Reuters reported that the Irish Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) had refused to look at the transfers of personal data undertaken by Apple and Facebook to the USA. An Austrian student activist group had asked the ODPC to investigate allegations that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) harvested emails and other private data via PRISM. This blog explains why I think the ODPC analysis is wrong. PRISM is the controversial programme that allegedly gives