Category: Data Protection
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David Erdos: Vince v Associated Newspapers: Have UK Data Protection’s Journalism Provisions Come of Age?
In Vince v Associated Newspapers [2026] EWCA Civ 899, the Court of Appeal held that an unfair processing compensation claim under data protection law provided redress against the seriously misleading publication of a juxtaposed headline and captioned photographs, even though this claim had not been raised in initial proceedings and redress was ruled out in…
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David Erdos: Lost in Inaction? The Statutory Reports on Media Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)
Editors’ note: This post was originally published on 12 February 2025 Section 179 of the Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018 places the Secretary of State under a duty to ensure that a Report is “la[id] before Parliament” on both the “use” and “effectiveness” of “relevant alternative dispute resolution procedures” in cases involving actual or alleged failures by media organisations, other than broadcasters, “to comply with…
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David Erdos: How Exposed? The Information Commissioner’s Office and the Afghan Spreadsheet Data Breach
On 17 August 2023 the Ministry of Defence (MoD) put the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on broad notice about the devastating failure of data protection that is now generally known as the Afghan data breach (although sadly there have been many others). This involved the illegal release of some 33,000 lines of gravely sensitive personal spreadsheet data which put almost 100,000 people – up…
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David Erdos: The UK Information Commissioner’s Annual Report 2024/25: Surveying a Systematic Trend Away from Adequate Enforcement
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) Annual Report for 2024/25 released last week sadly provides evidence of a severe and serious weakening of information rights regulation compared to the strong enforcement which is (and remains) promised especially under the (UK) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Despite even last year’s Report generally revealing formal enforcement such as…
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Ioannis Kouvakas: You Can’t Have Your Apple and Eat It Too: Decryption Orders and the Perilous Future of U.K. Data Adequacy
Earlier last month, The Washington Post reported that Apple, a technology company known for emphasizing privacy as one of its key selling points, had been ordered by the U.K. government to create a back door that would enable the retrieval of all content uploaded by any Apple user worldwide to iCloud. iCloud is a cloud storage service that…
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David Erdos: A Clear Oversight? Inquiring into the Information Commissioner’s 2024 Statutory Review of Journalism
2024 was billed to be the year of the first ‘robust and comprehensive’ UK statutory review of the extent of journalism’s compliance with data protection law and good practice, a formal appraisal which was (and is) meant to become a clear ‘part of the media landscape’ as reformed by the Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018 in the wake of the general/first…
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David Erdos: Leave to Remain? Data Protection’s ‘Immigration Exemption’ Returns to Court
With both the Illegal Migration Bill and the Data Protection and Digital Information (No. 2) Bill currently before Parliament, it is clear that both immigration control and data protection are high on the UK political agenda. Both areas have also been prominent before the courts. Moreover, litigation by the Open Rights Group and the The3million…