The insularity of English lawyers can often mean that limited attention is paid to legal developments north of the border. Scotland, like the past, is a legally foreign country and they do things differently there. However, we here at Panopticon are never afraid to join a rousing chorus of ‘500 Miles’ by The Proclaimers (you should see some of the blog’s team at the Christmas Party – carnage). Readers with elephantine memories and little to do by way of fun may recall my post on the Inner House’s judgment concerning the ‘Named Person Service’. At the end of term, the case reached the Supreme Court in The Christian Institute v Lord Advocate [2016] UKSC 51. Apologies in advance for the length of the post which follows… Continue reading →

FOIA does not have a particularly illustrious history in the Court of Appeal. Very few of the judgments which have issued from those august halls provide wider appellate guidance of the type generally useful from the higher courts, and some have been so deathly dull (I’m looking at you, Innes) that even the data protection cases look exciting. So it is with the Court of Appeal decision in Department for Work and Pensions v Information Commissioner & Zola [2016] EWCA Civ 758.

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One of the most interesting difficulties for data protection lawyers over the last few years (wake up at the back) has been the application of a DPA and a Directive drafted in an analogue age to a new digital world. The internet has posed many difficulties, and working out how to apply data protection law to it has been just one of them. It is an area which has begun to repeatedly trouble the CJEU. In Case C-191/15, Verein für Konsumenteninformation v Amazon EU Sàrl (judgment of 28 July 2016) the CJEU returned to the tricky and sui generis way the Directive deals with questions of the applicable law to data protection disputes. Continue reading →

There have been rumours, but Panopticon can confirm that the appeal to the Supreme Court in Google v Vidal-Hall on the disapplication of section 13(2) of the Data Protection Act 1998 has been withdrawn following an agreement being reached between the parties. This is obviously a disappointment to those wanting to see what the Supremes would make of the Court of Appeal’s very important judgment permitting damages claims for distress without the need to show pecuniary loss (and indeed to those interested in the use of the Charter of Fundamental Rights to disapply primary legislation). What it does mean is that the Court of Appeal decision stands (as discussed here). Whether it will stand for all time, or whether another case will try and re-open the point in the light of the Supreme Court having accepted that it was arguable is another matter, but for the moment continuity reigns and section 13(2) can return to the oblivion from which it had sought to rise.

Christopher Knight

Anya has already posted about what Brexit means for the future of data protection in the UK and there is a general consensus that anyone thinking they can ignore the GDPR now should think again. But just in case Anya Proops QC wasn’t authoritative enough for you (unlikely, I know), Baroness Neville-Rolfe gave a speech on 4 July which touched on data protection in our brave new world. Baroness Neville-Rolfe is, as any fule noe, the Minister for Data Protection. Continue reading →

If I am an extremely well-regarded academic at Cambridge (don’t snigger at the back, I could be) and due to my eminence I do some unpaid voluntary work for a major international group (here, the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change), the work in relation to which I do over my university email account, are those emails held by the University under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (“EIR”)?

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