“Sweeping new laws to allow ministers to release the private details of millions of people to a string of public bodies or private firms have been condemned as being ‘open sesame to a vast increase in government power’.”
The Independent, 27th January 2009
Source: www.independent.co.uk
“Celebrities and politicians will be able to keep their details off a controversial new database listing the personal details of every child in England, it has been reported.”
Daily Telegraph, 27th January 2009
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
“ContactPoint will include the names, ages and addresses of 11 million under-18s as well as information about their parents, GPs and schools. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have pledged to scrap the £224million online system – which will be accessed by at least 330,000 workers in the education, health, social care, youth justice and voluntary sectors – because they believe there is a danger that sensitive information will be mislaid or lost.”
Daily Telegraph, 26th January 2009
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
“Data held by the police, the NHS, schools, the Inland Revenue, local councils and the DVLA could all end up in private hands, according to Privacy International.”
Daily Telegraph, 26th January 2009
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
“The Home Office broke data protection laws when a contractor lost a memory stick with information on thousands of prisoners, a watchdog has ruled.”
BBC News, 22nd January 2009
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
“Andy Brown, the ex-assistant chief constable of West Yorkshire Police, was questioned by officers from the professional standards department over the case of former Chief Supt Elizabeth Preece’s missing spaniel.”
Daily Telegraph, 20th January 2009
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
“A Government plan to allow more extensive sharing of personal data is not restricted to the public sector and could result in Government-collected information being shared with private companies, a privacy expert has said.”
OUT-LAW.com, 16th January 2009
Source: www.out-law.com
“Sweeping new powers allowing personal information about every citizen to be handed over to government agencies faced condemnation yesterday amid warnings that Britain is experiencing the greatest threats to civil rights for decades.”
The Independent, 15th January 2009
Source: www.independent.co.uk
“A set of instructions on how organisations can stay within the Data Protection Act (DPA) while storing personal information has been published by British Standards (BSI).”
OUT-LAW.com, 14th January 2009
Source: www.out-law.com
“Privacy policies are full of jargon and are designed to reduce organisations’ liability rather than to help people understand what their personal data might be used for, the UK’s privacy watchdog has said.”
OUT-LAW.com, 12th January 2009
Source: www.out-law.com
“Government departments have failed to tighten data handling rules despite losing 30 million personal files in two years, it has been disclosed.”
Daily Telegraph, 12th January 2009
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
S and Marper v United Kingdom (Application Nos 30562/04 and 30566/04)
European Court of Human Rights
“The blanket and indiscriminate nature of the powers of retention of fingerprints, cellular samples and DNA profiles of persons suspected but not convicted of offences failed to strike a fair balance between the competing public and private interests.”
The Times, 8th December 2008
Source: www.timesonline.co.uk
Please note the Times Law Reports are only available free on Times Online for 21 days from the date of publication.
“Late abortions of ‘less than perfect’ foetuses are the subject of a secrecy row with the Government.”
Daily Telegraph, 8th December 2008
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
“More than 1.6 million DNA and fingerprint samples of innocent people on police databases must be destroyed after a court ruled yesterday that keeping them breaches human rights.”
The Times, 5th December 2008
Source: www.timesonline.co.uk
“Two men from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, who were previously cleared of criminal charges, have won a major victory after the European Court of Human Rights ruled keeping their DNA on the British police database breached their human rights.”
Daily Telegrap, 4th December 2008
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
“The police could be forced to wipe the profiles of nearly one million innocent people from the national DNA database if the Government loses a key test case today.”
Daily Telegraph, 4th December 2008
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
“Public bodies including councils, NHS Trusts, the police, the DVLA and Government department will be allowed to share information about individuals without the need to ask Parliament. They will only need to get the permission of ministers.”
Daily Telegraph, 4th December 2008
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
“The powers of Government to share data will be increased under new laws announced yesterday. Legislation will introduce a fast-track procedure to allow data sharing whenever ‘a robust case’ can be made for sharing, said a Ministry of Justice report.”
OUT-LAW.com, 25th November 2008
Source: www.out-law.com
“The Government has rejected calls for a law that would require significant data security breaches to be notified to the country’s privacy regulator. It said that notification to the Information Commissioner should be a matter of good practice, not law.”
OUT-LAW.com, 25th November 2008
Source: www.out-law.com
“Government departments and private sector companies who leak sensitive personal information into the public domain will in future face fines, under a proposal to give ‘teeth’ to the UK’s data watchdog.”
The Times, 24th November 2008
Source: www.timesonline.co.uk
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