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If you made a successful ‘right to be forgotten’ request to Google in the UK, the outcome would be that the URL you complained of would no longer appear in search results through the google.co.uk search engine. However, by simply using the .com version of the browser instead, that outcome would be neatly sidestepped: the offending URL would appear in the search list against your name, unaffected by your exercise of your right to be forgotten.

Google has announced today that, as requested by the ICO among others, it will change that practice and introduce consistency across the versions of its browser. Continue reading →

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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If you take the view that a reader’s comments about you posted on a news website infringe your privacy or data protection rights, should you be able to sue the website (as opposed to the author of the comments)? This question is enormously important. It reflects our evolving legal, social and ethical approach to resolving tensions between freedom of expression and privacy. It goes to the heart of both online journalism and internet business models. A new judgment given today makes an important contribution to this debate – and will be seen as heartening for advocates of free expression in an online world. Continue reading →

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 →