Category: News

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 –

I think 99.999% of people in the UK have never met, or heard of, Mr. Stephen McCartney. Those attending data protection conferences might recall him speaking about his policy role at Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO); indeed we have asked him to speak at our Update sessions because he is articulate and thought provoking. Yet Mr. McCartney has become a central figure in the national press and the blogosphere over a story about the ICO’s investigation into Google’s StreetView. Mr. McCartney

About three months ago, I blogged about the considerable Member State “disharmony” about the content of the Data Protection Regulation published in January. Well the disagreements have multiplied, and the Council has “released” a revised position on the first 10 Articles of the new Data Protection Regulation that will replace the 1995 Directive. The changes favour data controllers. The text contains details of 147 Member State reservations on Articles 1-10 and 80(a) and 83 (about one ninth of the 90

In one of my blogs on Google StreetView (see references), I said that the Information Commissioner (ICO) could not serve a Monetary Penalty Notice (MPN) on Google when its software captured some personal data from household Wifi systems. This assessment was based on the fact that Google published statements to the effect that only an insignificant cache of random personal data was captured and that any capture of personal data was wholly unintentional. I argued that the problem when serving