Category: Data Protection

At a meeting of the Council of Ministers at the end of last month, the UK Government joined the Governments of Denmark, Slovenia, Belgium, Hungary and Sweden in opposing the Commission’s Data Protection Regulation; instead these countries want a new Data Protection Directive. Only Bulgaria, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Italy, Greece and Ireland expressed support for the concept of a Data Protection Regulation. Sensing that the Regulation might be in trouble, the European Commissioner proposing the Regulation (Ms. Reding)

Gosh, crumbs and crikey! Talk about the “Road to Damascus”. The Information Commissioner, in his Enforcement Notice issued to Southampton City Council in July, has made an express link between Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention and lawful processing under the First Data Protection Principle. Furthermore, Southampton has appealed the Notice; this means the Tribunal should hear arguments about Article 8 and adjudicate, in detail, on how Human Rights and Data Protection legislation interact. I have often moaned (and

I have just won a minor victory against my local authority (Waltham Forest) which used images captured by a mobile CCTV unit to issue a £110 fixed penalty notice for a parking violation; I managed to get the penalty set aside. This blog presents the case that the Council’s use of CCTV in instances like mine are in breach of the Data Protection Act (DPA) and possibly the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), even though there are parking restrictions

Reading between the lines of the latest Annual Report of the Surveillance Commissioner (published last week) there is much to worry about; a lack of resources is undermining privacy protection and the system of supervision. As well as this significant degradation in privacy protection, the Surveillance Commissioner hints that the monitoring of users on the Internet might be unlawful if it does not consider the requirements of the Regulation on Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA). He also implies that the

In August 2010, the Audit Commission was targeted for abolition. At that time, I asked “who would get the Commission’s data matching powers?”. Two years later we have part of the answer: the Secretary of State (SoS) responsible for Local Government. In a draft Audit Bill published last week, Eric Pickles (the current SoS) is suggesting he is given wide ranging data matching powers that covers all local government functions (and all public bodies that deliver local government functions –