Category: News

This blog reports the latest leak from "the DAPIX sieve" in the areas of transfers of personal data outside the EEA and fines from Data Protection Authorities (references below has the link to the leaked document). As is well known the Irish have published the first 40 Articles of the Commission’s Regulation (see previous blogs); this leak (at the end of the Irish Presidency) gives a good idea of the direction of travel in relation to the remaining 50 Articles.

No doubt you have seen this weekend’s brouhaha about GCHQ and the Guardian’s allegation that it has intercepted communications on a gargantuan scale. Well I think Mr Hague can clear everything up with a public statement as to why he thinks such interception is proportionate without any nonsense such as: "I can't say anything because that could jeopardise national security”. Why? Because it is very likely that he has signed (or authorised) a warrant phrased in very general terms that

Today’s blog deals with the UK position on the Irish text of the Regulation and is based on the statements of Chris Grayling MP, the Cabinet Minister responsible for data protection at a June’s Council of Ministers meeting (see references). Following these statements I have concluded that the current UK Government policy on data protection supports a level of protection below that established by Directive 95/46/EC. This arises because the Government want many more data protection obligations in the replacement

Successive UK Governments have seen data protection more as a cost overhead to be minimised rather than as an essential protection for the individual in an electronic age. This view started with Mrs Thatcher’s first Government and has endured for over three decades. During the 1970s, there were a number of White Papers and Reports starting with the Younger Report on Privacy (in 1972) and ending with the Lindop’s Report on Data Protection (December 1978). So when Mrs Thatcher came