Category: News

The Conservative Party have a bee in their bonnet about the European Convention on Human Rights; possibly this is because it has the word “European” in the title. No doubt to gain plaudits, Theresa May, Home Secretary, at the Conservative Party conference said the following: “We all know the stories about the Human Rights Act. ….The illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because – and I am not making this up – he had a pet cat”. “This is why

The Information Commissioner has called for the commencement of the custodial element of the section 55 offences and expressly criticised data protection compliance by local authorities as being “very bad”. He also criticised data controllers, especially in banks and financial services, as being uncooperative in relation to consensual data protection audits. He also anticipates that agreement over the text of a forthcoming data protection directive will be protracted and will take “years”. These points were made in a wide ranging

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”