Category: News

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

Suppose you see a mouse in your house; is this the only mouse in your house? The relevance of the question will come apparent when we dig deeper into those infamous “black boxes” allegedly used by the USA’s National Security Agency, the latest GCHQ mass interception fandango, and the responsibilities of the Information Commissioner. With respect to the “black boxes”, I am surprised that no-one has linked the latest machinations with the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) debacle