Rather unsurprisingly, a rather surprising application, in databreach proceedings, for anonymity for all 2502 claimants has been dismissed by the High Court.
In Secake & Ors v Shared Services Connected Ltd (Rev1) [2026] EWHC 1022 (KB), Mr Justice Saini was asked to grant the application by claimants who are current or former members of HM Crown Forces (or partners/children of such persons).
The defendant is a processor (on behalf of the Ministry of Defence) which administers pensions schemes of the claimants, and appears to have been subject to a third party attack leading to access to and exfiltration of the claimants’ data.
The claimants submitted that unless the order sought was made, their personal details would be disclosed to the public for an indeterminate period; and to disclose the names and other personal details of the victims of a personal data breach is not a neutral thing – by placing these details in the public domain and associating them with a data breach would ‘magnify’ the victims’ ‘harm and hurt’, and strike at the their privacy right”. Additionally, because the personal details are those of HM Armed Forces, and their immediate families, in relation to their service to the country, this placed a ‘premium’ on their anonymity, because otherwise their data could be exploited by “malicious persons”, including “hostile nation states”.
Saini J had little truck with this: the application failed “by some margin”. Firstly, there was no justification for the application being made on a general basis across the whole class of claimants. Secondly, the mere fact that the claimants work or worked in the forces was wholly inadequate as evidence to assert that their Convention rights were engaged. Thirdly, the proposition that anonymity was required so as not to exacerbate the effects of the data breach had the logical extension that the same would apply to *any* data breach claim: “That would be a major and unjustified encroachment on the open justice principle”. Fourthly, no specific evidence about individual claimants’ need for anonymity had been supplied. Fifthly, the “hostile nation state” argument was pure speculation. Sixthly, an argument advanced orally by counsel that malign third parties might try to buy the claimants’ data from the hackers was also speculative.
The risks of applying a general anonymity cloak across the class was illustrated by the fact that at least four of the claimants were shown to have LinkedIn profiles which announced that they were members of HM Forces.
Finally, the judge noted that prior notice of the anonymity application should have, but had not, been provided to the media.
As the judgment records, “The principle of open justice prevails.”
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