Employment vetting in the news

Posted on | by Timothy Pitt-Payne KC

There’s an employment law supplement in the latest Legal Week, and I have an article about employment vetting. 

At the end of the article there’s a short discussion of something I’ve written about previously on this blog; the amount of personal information that’s now put on the internet, and its implications for recruitment. Looking at the way the article is presented, it’s clear that the editorial team thought that this was the interesting bit of the article.

I’ll be speaking about employment vetting again next week, at the Local Government Group conference on 29th April.   This event is a wide-ranging legal update for local authority lawyers – it’s a joint event between LGG and 11KBW.  If you’re coming to the conference, do come and introduce yourself and let me know what you think of the blog.

Rethinking RIPA

Posted on | by Anya Proops KC

On 17 April 2009, the Home Office launched a consultation on plans to stop investigatory powers being used under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) for trivial purposes. It seeks views on questions including: which public authorities should be able to authorise key investigatory techniques, for example, the use of communications data or covert surveillance in public places under RIPA; the purposes for which these investigatory techniques should be used; the option of raising the rank of the local authority employee authorising the use of investigatory techniques to senior executive; and whether elected councillors should play a role in the authorisation. The consultation follows on from a spate of public outcrys about the use of surveillance powers by public authorities, including not least the use of covert cameras by local authorities to watch how residents use their rubbish bins and the use of covert surveillance techniques to track a family which the local authority suspected may be living outside the local school catchment area. The issue of how the investigatory powers available under RIPA should be used is particularly current in view of the recent controversy over techniques used by the police to photograph protesters, many of whom it is argued are merely peaceful demonstrators.

Include me out

Posted on | by Timothy Pitt-Payne KC

In the past few days there has been a lot of media coverage about online behavioural advertising – see for example this article published earlier this week in the Financial Times, under the euphonious title “A deeper peeper”. 

One important issue in this context (e.g. in assessing whether this form of advertising involves unfair processing of personal information under the Data Protection Act) is the extent to which individuals can opt out of having information collected about their web usage.  An opt out facility is offered by this site, which is maintained by a number of online advertising companies (including Google).  

If you want to see whether Google is collecting information about your advertising preferences, or if you want to change that information, then you can do so here.

There’s an important general point here.  Privacy will in future depend increasingly on two things.  One is the development of tools to enable individuals to protect their privacy.   The other is the willingness of individuals to find out about those tools and to use them.  The Information Commissioner issued a report on this subject – entitled “Privacy by design” – in November 2008.  

The other side of the coin, as far as behavioural advertising is concerned, is that some individuals will actually welcome the prospect of receiving advertisements that are targeted to their individual interests.  For instance, a number of Amazon users are happy to see book recommendations that reflect their previous use of the Amazon site.

Bad Phorm?

Posted on | by Anya Proops KC

The European Commission has announced that it is mounting a legal challenge in respect of the use of targeted online advertising in the UK. The challenge follows complaints which were made to the Commission in response to BT’s act of testing the technology on BT broadband users without their consent. The technology, which is the brainchild of a company called Phorm, enables internet service providers (ISPs) to profile what sites internet users visit so as to enable advertising companies more astutely to target their adverts on individual users. The Commission has taken the view that the UK has breached EU data protection laws by permitting the deployment of the technology in the absence of user consent. The Information Commissioner’s Office has previously stated that the use of the technology would be permissible if operated on the basis that users have opted in to the system. The Commission’s challenge raises real questions as to the legality of Google’s recently launched behavioural targeting system. See further my post on this system below.

DPA/FOIA overlap

Posted on | by Timothy Pitt-Payne KC

The overlap between FOIA and the DPA gives rise to  a number of difficult problems.

In a paper just posted on 11KBW’s website (and originally delivered to a JUSTICE/Sweet & Maxwell conference in December 2008) I discuss some of these issues.  In particular, I deal with the practical problems that arise when an individual makes a request for information to a public authority and some (but not all) of the information constitutes his own personal data.  Because the request falls under both the DPA and FOIA, the Information Commissioner will need to deal with any complaint under two different legal regimes; if the requester subsequently appeals, the Information Tribunal will not have jurisdiction to deal with all the issues raised by the request.  The article suggests that the present position is unsatisfactory and discusses options for reform.

Google’s Streetview – ICO Responds

Posted on | by Anya Proops KC

The launch of Google’s Streetview service in March 2009 sparked considerable debate within the British media. Privacy campaigners criticised the intrusive nature of the service, which enables internet users to access 360 degree views of people, homes, cars and streets in 25 of Britain’s cities. It would appear that the Information Commissioner has now had his say on the matter. According to an article published in yesterday’s Observer newspaper, the Information Commissioner rejected a complaint brought by Privacy International which challenged the legality of the service. Notably, the Observer reports that the Commissioner dismissed the suggestion put forward by Privacy International that consent should have been sought from individuals whose image was captured in the pictures shown by Streetview. He apparently compared the Streetview service with images of individuals broadcast during televised football matches, where similarly consent would not be sought. Of course, Streetview is not the only part of Google’s operations which have given rise to privacy concerns. Not least in recent weeks, concerns have been raised about another Google innovation, which enables advertisers to target adverts on individual Google users by relying on  site-visit profiles developed by Google. The so-called behavioural targeting system enables Google to build up a profile of the internet sites visited by a particular user when using the Google search engine. The profile is then used as a basis for indicating what advertising the user may be interested in. Concerns expressed about the new system have included that individuals are not asked whether they wish to receive targeted advertising and, further, that the right to opt out of the system is not adequately advertised to users.

Guardian article on Streetview:

https://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/12/google-street-view-privacy

Channel 4 report on Behavioural Targetting System

https://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/how+google+adverts+got+personal/3076122