Category: Data Protection

I must confess that I find it rich that New Labour Ministers, who were in Government for more than a decade, are now huffing and puffing about their “phone inboxes being hacked”. The sad truth is that, in Government, they could have done a great deal to protect individual privacy by making such hacking a custodial offence. In short, they failed to implement an offence that would have extended to a very large number of situations – well beyond the difficult issue of

According to a new proposed German law, it will soon become unlawful for employers in Germany to look at their Facebook profiles of prospective employees. Given that use of the Internet to vet job applicants appears to be on the increase, it might be useful to summarise the application of the current UK data protection law, should an employer search the Internet for details of a “data subject” whether that data subject be a current employee or prospective employee. As

The press coverage of last Friday’s unexpected announcement that the Audit Commission is to be abolished failed to mention a key data protection issue: who is going to inherit its data matching mantle? The answer is important because the Commission’s extensive, privacy-invasive, data matching powers were enacted by the last surveillance-addicted Government and extend well beyond a narrow benefit fraud remit. Data matching involves comparing sets of personal data, such as the payroll or benefits records of a body, against

A blog reader asked me to look at the Code of Practice on the acceptable use of body scanners to enhance security at UK airports. The consultation period associated with the Code ended four weeks ago, so I apologise for a severe case of “better late than never”. In summary, the Code still ignores several key issues. However, to be fair to the incoming Coalition Government, the consultation had been commenced in the dying days of the previous administration. It

The European Commission will no doubt expect plaudits for its request to the UK Government to change the Data Protection Act so that it meets the standard established by the Directive 95/46/EC. In practice, the Commission should answer questions as to why it has taken over seven years to reach a conclusion which has been obvious to data protection experts from the time of the Durant decision back in December 2003. Since that time, the Commission has stood on the