Category: Data Protection

One of the unanswered questions arising from the August riots is whether the Government need new powers to block the use of Twitter, Facebook and other social media which were used to organise the disturbances. Prime Minister David Cameron suggested, in the immediate aftermath of the rioting, that blocking the use of social networking communications was a policy option that was to be orgently discussed with telecommunications operators (and then implemented as a priority). So when the Home Office says

Back from holiday to find an authoritative Report into “Protecting Information Privacy” just published by the Human Rights and Equality Commission on my desk. It concludes with a stark warning: “The right to privacy is at risk of being eroded by the growing demand for information by government and the private sector. Unless we start to reform the law and build a regulatory system capable of protecting information privacy, we may soon find that it is a thing of the

From a data protection perspective, it has been hard to keep up with recent events: every day has been more revealing than the previous day. A company’s powerful management has been humbled for invasions of privacy; worse could follow, if the allegation that the company "hacked" the families of 9/11 victims, is proven. No more will any manager be able to say “Privacy and data protection law: that is risk-free piffle!”. The Home Affairs Select Committee Report published yesterday contains

In the middle of the Major years (back in the 1990’s), David Mellor, then a Cabinet Minister (whose fascination for female toes was discussed by the tabloids, in the “public interest” of course) famously said that the press were drinking at “the last chance saloon”. Fifteen years of hard drinking later, the recent events into phone hacking shown that some journalists and editors were too drunk to notice. In this fast moving field, there are four data protection issues to

Following last week’s U-turn on prison sentencing, I think there is a possibility that the Government could change its approach to the retention of personal data on the DNA database. Ministers are clearly worried that they are being labelled as “soft on law and order”, especially by the tabloid press. At last week’s Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs), David Cameron said that he would look into whether the police should retain the DNA of those arrested but not charged because of “evidence”

The proposed PNR Directive, if implemented by Member States in its current form, promises a low level of data protection and the absence of obvious privacy safeguards. The Directive permits a system of data protection regulation for PNR data that is fragmented and role of the data protection authority that can be minimised by Member States. There are also particularly weak provisions relating to transparency. The current text allows Member States the flexibility to transfer PNR data to any third

I think the Daily Mail, the newspaper that has Paul Dacre at its helm, has blown it. According to a Court judgment issued last Friday, he has allowed his newspaper to publish deliberate untruths in order to further his campaign against privacy injunctions. The injunction in question involved “Fred the Shred”, the erstwhile banker who has cost the taxpayer millions of pounds when the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) collapsed. So how did the Daily Mail attempt to undermine a

I wrote last Friday’s blog before the weekend’s Twittering events and it is quite clear that the injunction protecting the footballer’s privacy is unsustainable. Clearly barring all of the press from mentioning a name simply is a non-starter (especially as the footballer’s name was chanted by fans at yesterday’s Premier League games). However, several facts are being missed in the current reporting furore. First is that the Court granted the footballer an injunction because the newspaper concerned was the beneficiary of an