Category: Other Information Law

There is a dispute between the British Medical Association and the insurance industry over payments for GP medical reports concerning the health of claimants and the underwriting of insurance. The result is that some insurance providers (e.g. Legal and General) are resorting to a variant of enforced subject access. This trend is likely to continue, especially if Government plans to provide patients with on-line access to their own health records come to fruition. I can see many organisations being tempted to

The Data Protection Regulation intended to replace Directive 95/46/EC has broken the very explicit link to Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. It has also replaced the “right to privacy” with “the right to the protection of personal data” (which I will shorten to the "right to data protection"). Article 1 of Directive 95/46/EC to be replaced, defines its purpose in these words: “In accordance with this Directive, Member States shall protect the fundamental rights and freedoms

Belated Happy New Year, but we start 2012 with a report that has a lot in it. Stick with this judgement as, in summary, it states that: (a) the term “lawful” processing in First Principle relates to that processing which is consistent with the application of any relevant law including law of confidence (the Information Commissioner is not keen to enforce “lawful processing”); I should add that the implications of “lawful processing” have yet to be applied to other Principles (e.g. to the

There is a folk tradition which involves ABC songs; the “Sailor’s ABC” and the “Socialist’s ABC” are perhaps the most notable. So to sing at parties or around the holiday log-fires, I offer an addition to the genre. It is called "The Data Protection Officer's ABC".    When that I was a tiny, tiny boy, my daddy said to me; "The time has come, me bonny, bonny bairn, to learn your ABC." Now my daddy was a privacy man and had

Did you see the recent press coverage extolling the virtues of latest European Union Agreement with the USA as to how Europe will exchange Passenger Name Records (PNR)? Much of the press coverage was highly favourable, highlighting additional privacy protections, shorter periods of data retention and thorough respect for data subject rights. All these assertions are somewhere between misleading and wrong. Yesterday, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) entered the fray. His analysis (see references) concludes that: the 15-year retention

I have just had published an article on PECR and Data Protection in the context of email marketing. I think it might be useful to practitioners so I have added it to the blog. It combines the marketing rules under PECR with the Data Protection obligations and goes into the overlap between subscriber, user and data subject. The article will be useful for practitioners from the public and private sector data controllers, as well as those sitting the ISEB exam. Enjoy reading. I had a

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