The Information Commissioner has successfully prosecuted a former Social Services Support Officer at Dorset County Council for an offence under section 170 of the Data Protection Act 2018 – I think that this is the first such prosecution under the 2018 Act. Section 170 is in broadly similar terms to section 55 of the Data Protection Act 1998, under which any number of prosecutions were brought for unlawfully obtaining (etc) personal data without the consent of the controller.
Just as the 1998 Act did, the 2018 Act reserves such prosecutions to the Commissioner (except that they may also be brought by or with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions – see s197 of the 2018 Act).
What we have not yet seen is a prosecution of the “new” offence at section 170(1)(c) of retaining personal data (after obtaining it) without the consent of the person who was the controller when it was obtained. This is a most interesting provision – I have wondered whether the mischief it aims to address is that which arises when someone inadvertently obtains personal data (perhaps as a result of a mistake by the controller) but then refuses to hand it back. This is not an infrequent occurrence, and powers at civil law to address the issue are potentially complex and expensive to exercise. It will be interesting to see whether prosecutions in this regard emerge in due course.
The views in this post (and indeed most posts on this blog) are my personal ones, and do not represent the views of any organisation I am involved with.
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