Just like the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, bizarre alien crystal skull things and whatever it was they were looking for in the Temple of Doom, there is another object of great supposed power and endless fascination. Known only as the ‘EU-US Privacy Shield’ – to be wielded with the mighty Sword of Data no doubt – it is rumoured to have the ability to prevent secret intelligence-harvesting, solve personal data disputes and single-handedly rescue inter-state trade. Like a less exciting Corby trouser press. And now this amazing artefact has been uncovered, by the European Commission no less, buried at the bottom of a Brussels file marked ‘Desperate Ideas to Buy Time’.

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Readers will recall a minor data protection development last year in Case C-362/14 Schrems, in which the CJEU annulled the Safe Harbor (or Harbour) framework under which data had been merrily being transferred from the EU to the US without, apparently, breaching the eighth data protection principle (in strictly DPA terms). It prompted rather a lot of commentary online, including here and here, as well as some frantic reassurances from the European Commission discussed by me here. Readers may also recall the warning issued by the Article 29 Working Party that if a solution wasn’t found by the end of January, they would be take appropriate action (drum roll please). Continue reading →

One might have thought, following the judgments of the Court of Appeal (noted here) and the Supreme Court (noted here) in R (T) v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police [2014] UKSC 35, that there was little left to say about enhanced criminal records certificates (ECRC). After all, the Government had, with moderate grace, gone away after the Court of Appeal loss and drafted a revised set of rules in the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2013 (SI 2013/1198) which sought to better implement the Article 8 ECHR balance between the needs of employers and the need for long-distant misbehaviour not to be a permanent stain. But that thought fatally undervalues the ingenuity of lawyers (as well as the breadth of application of the ECRC regime). Continue reading →

One of the more popular posts Panopticon has been responsible for was alerting people to an MoJ consultation proposal to introduce fees for all cases in the General Regulatory Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal. That includes appeals against DPA information, enforcement and monetary penalty notices, and appeals against Information Commissioner decision notices under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004.

A mass campaign was orchestrated by the Campaign for Freedom of Information which generated over 40,000 responses opposing fees for FOIA appeals. Continue reading →

By way of brief update, Panopticon has learned that the Supreme Court has refused Mr Dransfield permission to appeal against the Court of Appeal’s judgment concerning vexatious requests under section 14(1) FOIA. This represents the end of that important piece of litigation. The Supreme Court also ruled that the issue of European law raised in the application for permission was “irrelevant”. It is unclear from the refusal of permission what that issue was, or what it could have been in the circumstances.

Christopher Knight

It is panto season, and everyone loves a good villain. This Christmas’ Wicked Stepmother is the Mirror Group who, when asking ‘Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the most liable of them all?’ has received the answer from the Court of Appeal that they are and must pay the consequences.

The Court of Appeal’s decision in Mirror Group Newspapers v Gulati & others [2015] EWCA Civ 1291 is a ringing endorsement of the lengthy (over 700 paragraphs) and detailed approach of Mann J at first instance, which Robin Hopkins has previously discussed (here). Given that endorsement, the judgment of Arden LJ can perhaps be taken more quickly than might otherwise be the case. Continue reading →