Data protection and compensation: the “irreversible march” towards revolutionary change

At 11KBW’s Information Law conference this past Tuesday, I talked a bit about the progress of the draft EU Data Protection Regulation. I omitted to mention last week’s development (my reason: I was on holiday in Venice, where data protection seemed less pressing). In a plenary session on 12 March, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly […]

Facebook fan pages: data protection buck stops with Facebook, not page owners

In Re Facebook, VG, Nos. 8 A 37/12, 8 A 14/12, 8 A 218/11, 10/9/13 the Schleswig-Holstein Administrative Court has allowed Facebook’s appeals against rulings of the regional data protection authority (the ULD), Thilo Weichert. The case involved a number of companies’ use of Facebook fan pages. The ULD’s view was that Facebook breached German […]

Update on recent Tribunal decisions part 2: personal data of “low inherent sensitivity”

The “personal data” provisions under s. 40(2) FOIA and regulation 13 EIR can often be very difficult to apply, particularly in light of the Durant “notions of assistance”, namely biographical significance and focus. It is correspondingly difficult to predict how such arguments will fare before the Tribunal. Two recent cases offer good illustrations. Both saw […]

Include me out

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 […]