How does data protection law feed into, and support, challenges to police action in the form of refusing press accreditation for a political party conference? The Divisional Court considered this in R (Segalov) v Chief Constable of Sussex Police & Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police [2018] EWHC 3187 (Admin). Continue reading →

Death may be the great leveller, but does it also bring to an end an appeal brought under section 28(4) of the Data Protection Act 1998 against a national security certificate issued by the Secretary of State? The answer of the Upper Tribunal in Campbell v Secretary of State for Northern Ireland [2018] UKUT 372 (AAC) was: Yes. Continue reading →

Panopticon has generally avoided venturing too far into Brexit-related updates: there has invariably been very little by way of actual facts to comment on (not that that has stopped people). But 14 November 2018 does mark something of a landmark, even if by the time you read this it may well all have collapsed like a particularly badly made soufflé. By the time you watch the repeat on Dave it may look like a legal history article. Here goes nothing… Continue reading →

Everyone is weighing in on the right to be forgotten these days and now, not to miss a turn on the rights bandwagon when its Luxembourg rival has got in ahead of it, the European Court of Human Rights has had a go too in ML & WW v Germany (App. No. 60798/10 and 65599/10) (judgment of 28 June 2018). Continue reading →

For some people, August suggests that there is more to life than blogging about how to approach cases in which requested information is environmental and some is not. At Panopticon we regard such fly-by-night lightweight losers as simply wrong. We know you agree (or at least you will, when you get back from holiday and see this). Continue reading →

Stunt v Associated Newspapers Ltd [2018] EWCA Civ 1780 is a dispute between the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Mail Online, and the eye-wateringly rich former son-in-law of Berne Ecclestone about coverage of the latter by the former. Simply googling the claimant’s name and seeing the Mail Online headines gives some idea of why he might find that coverage less than flattering. It is, in short, a dispute where most people would like both sides to lose. Continue reading →