Category Archives: monetary penalty notice

May 30, 2014 · 8:46 am

Data Protection in the Court System

The Lord Chief Justice’s welcome call for a modern ICT system for the courts of England and Wales does, at the same time, raise concerns about the data protection compliance of the current systems

If a representative of a public sector data controller, responsible for processing huge amounts of manual and electronic sensitive data (of all categories), were to concede that their systems for handling this data “were recognised as outdated more than 15 years ago” it would – one imagines – raise a few eyebrows in Wilmslow. Outdated systems are, by default, systems which are unlikely to indicate compliance by the relevant data controller with the seventh data protection principle:

Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data

A serious contravention of the obligation to comply with that principle can lead to monetary penalty notices to a maximum sum of £500,000, as many data controllers know to their cost.

But such a concession is just what the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales appeared to make at the Annual Lecture of the Society of Computers and Law on 20 May in London. In his lecture he referred to

 re-entering information on different systems, using and holding paper files, diaries that are manual and unreliable telephonic and video communications

He spoke of how

Once papers are misfiled they are lost. In a number of parts of the country it is difficult to find people to do the filing at a wage which HMG is prepared to pay

and that

Save for using Outlook, judges have no electronic filing system for their administration. Outside the most senior Judiciary, very little clerical support is available for the judges

 All of this is enough to make most data security and data protection officers have sleepless (and screamful) nights.

In fairness to Lord Thomas, a) he was reflecting his own personal views, and b) his lecture, which laid out the history of how things had got to this state, was admirably aimed at seizing an opportunity to modernise. However, it did make me wonder how the judicial system appears to have largely avoided the steely enforcement glare of the Information Commissioner. I think this is probably, in part, because it is highly complicated when looked at through the lens of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). The DPA distinguishes between data controllers and data processors, with former attracting all the legal obligations and liabilities under the Act. A data controller is, by section 1(1) of the DPA

a person who (either alone or jointly or in common with other persons) determines the purposes for which and the manner in which any personal data are, or are to be, processed

Applying this to the situations which obtain in the court system is not an easy task (although it isn’t uniquely difficult – the distinction between data controller and processor is a notoriously complex, and perhaps increasingly artificial, one to establish). It seems to me that, with the sorts of personal data being processed as part of a legal claim or trial before a court, there may be multiple data controllers doing different things with the same or similar data – the parties, their legal representatives, the court staff, and the judiciary are those which immediately come to mind. In such circumstances we are probably talking about data controllers in common (“where data controllers share a pool of personal data, each processing independently of the other”*).

What is certain is that the Judicial Office for England and Wales considers the judiciary to be data controllers at least for some personal data and some acts of processing which take place within the court system. In a document entitled “Judicial Responsibilities and the Data Protection Act 1998” it says that

It is now acknowledged that individual judicial office-holders are data controllers in circumstances in which they determine the purpose for which and the manner in which any personal data is processed. This is so in relation to data processed in the exercise of any judicial functions

And another document “IT and Information Security Guidance for the Judiciary” contains generally sensible advice to judiciary on ICT security, but fine words butter no parsnips, and if the reality, as suggested by the Lord Chief Justice’s lecture (and, indeed, anecdotal evidence I have seen and heard) does not match up to the intentions of that document, then it would point to potentially serious contraventions of the DPA.

In April 2013 the Information Commissioner’s Office published the summary outcome of a data protection audit it had performed – by consent – on HM Courts and Tribunals Service. The audit gave the ICO “reasonable assurance” but one notes that it focused on data protection governance, training, and subject access requests, and did not appear to encompass security. And, for the reasons discussed earlier in this post, HMCTS are only one of the data controllers in play in the court system. In the rather unlikely event that the ICO decided to seek to audit them, would judges pass so easily?

*ICO Data Protection Legal Guidance, page 16

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March 19, 2014 · 2:27 pm

Kent Police get £100,000 penalty for poor data security

I blogged last week about “data breaches”, and the need to define and sometimes to differentiate between a breach of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) and a general data security breach. Well, I’m (not at all) pleased to say that today’s news of the latest monetary penalty notice (MPN) served by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on Kent Police doesn’t need any such nuanced analysis. Here was a data security breach which was also a manifest breach of the DPA.

A police officer, by chance, discovered in some premises video tapes clearly marked as police material. He subsequently ascertained that the owner had found them, and much more besides, in the basement of a former police station which he had purchased. It is difficut to think of more sensitive information than the kind which was involved here. In part it consisted of

documents and video/audio tapes containing confidential and highly sensitive personal data about a significant number of individuals. These included files relating to threats to kill, rape, grievous bodily harm and child abuse cases; interviews with victims, witnesses/informants and suspects

Although the force had initially

taken some steps to safeguard the information by carrying out inspections of the former police station which identified that items were still in situ

the failure to have any policies in place, or to assign responsibility to anyone, meant that this was a clear and serious contravention of the seventh data protection principle (relating to data security measures) of a kind likely to cause, at least, substantial distress. I would add, although the ICO does not, that it might well have been also a serious contravention of the fifth principle (“Personal data processed for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes”). Given this, it is somewhat surprising that this case falls (admittedly at the top end) into the lowest category of cases qualifying for an MPN (the ICO’s internal guidance says that these cases will attract an amount of £40,000 to £100,000). Bearing in mind that Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust got an MPN of £325,000 for failing to dispose of computer hard drives properly, this current MPN seems low.

It also, once again, draws attention to the importance of good records management within police forces. I wrote only recently, in the context of the Ellison Review of policing relating to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, about how records management is essential for the operation of the rule of law and the current case just gives even greater strength to this.

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March 16, 2014 · 8:36 am

Sale of patient data – time for an independent review?

The Sunday Times reports that a billion patient records have been sold to a marketing consultancy. Is it time for an independent review of these highly questionable data sharing practices?

In 2012, at the behest of the then Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley (driver of the Health and Social Care Act 2012), Dame Fiona Caldicott chaired a review of information governance in the NHS. Her report, which focused on the issue of sharing of information, was published in April 2013. At the time a statement in it, referring to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) stood out to me, and it stands out even more now, but for different reasons. It says

The ICO told the Review Panel that no civil monetary penalties have been served for a breach of the Data Protection Act due to formal data sharing between data controllers in any organisation for any purpose

At the time, I thought “Well duh” – of course the ICO is not going to take enforcement action where there has been a formal data sharing agreement, because, clearly, the parties entering into such an agreement are going to make sure they do so lawfully, and with regard to the ICO guidance on data sharing – lawful and proportionate data sharing is, er, lawful, so the ICO wouldn’t be able to take action.

But now, with the frequent and worrying stories emerging of apparent data sharing arrangements between the NHS Information Centre (NHSIC), and its successor, the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), I start to think the ICO’s comments are remarkable for what they might reveal about them looking in the wrong direction, when they should have been paying more attention to the lawfulness of huge scale data sharing arrangements between the NHS and private bodies. And now, The Sunday Times reports that

A BILLION NHS records containing details of patients’ hospital admissions and operations have been sold to a marketing consultancy working for some of the world’s biggest drug companies

I think it is time for a wholesale review, properly funded, by the ICO as independent regulator, of these “formal data sharing” arrangements. They appear to have a questionable legal basis, based to a large extent on questionable assumptions and assurances that pseudonymisation equates to anonymisation (which anyone who looks into will realise is nonsense).

And I think the review should also consider how and why these arrangements appear to have deliberately been taking place behind the backs of the patients whose data has been “shared”.

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March 13, 2014 · 5:43 pm

Data Protection – civil and criminal action in tandem

The Guardian reports that

A police force faces a fine from the information commissioner and compensation claims from thousands of motorists after an officer stole accident victims’ details from a police computer and sold them on to personal injury solicitors

The crime here was shocking: the ex-officer, with a co-conspirator, accessed accident victims’ records on police systems, and then rang them, posing as a car repairs company, urging them to claim compensation. She would then pass the information to solicitors for a referral fee. Because there is currently no custodial sentence available for offences under the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), and because she was a public officer, she was prosecuted for the offence of misconduct in a public office, and sentenced to three and a half years’ imprisonment (her co-conspirator received three years).

But what interests me is the Guardian’s suggestion, prompted it seems by comments made in court, that the employing police force (Thames Valley Police), as data controller, is potentially to face civil claims from aggrieved individuals and civil enforcement action from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). For the force to be liable to either of these, it must be shown to have contravened its obligations under the DPA. And, contrary to what many people think, the mere fact that a data controller has lost, or had stolen, personal data, does not mean ineluctably that it has contravened the DPA.

The seventh principle of the DPA provides

Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data

and an allegation of a failure to do so (and hence of a contravention of the obligation, at section 4(4), to comply with the eight DPA principles) is likely to be the basis of any civil action.

Moreover, for civil enforcement, in the form of a monetary penalty notice (MPN), under section 55A, to be taken by the ICO, the contravention must be a “serious” one, “of a kind likely to cause significant damage or significant distress” and the data controller has to have known there was a risk of such a contravention happening, but to have failed to take reasonable steps to prevent it. This presents a series of boxes for the ICO to tick before enforcement action, and his experience in having an MPN recently overturned by the First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights) (FTT) will have shown how potentially onerous it is to successfully serve one. In that instance, the FTT found that, although Scottish Borders Council had committed a serious contravention of the seventh principle, in allowing its contractor to dispose of pensions records unsecurely, it was not a of a kind likely to cause significant damage or significant distress (the FTT was unimpressed by the ICO’s claim that data subjects were put at risk of identity fraud).

The test for successful civil claims for compensation (under section 13 DPA) to be brought by data subjects against a data controller is not so onerous, however. All that a claimant needs to show is that there has been “any contravention of any requirements of the Act” by a data controller which has caused the claimant to suffer damage (note that it doesn’t have to have been a “serious” contravention, and the damage doesn’t have to have been serious, but it must have been real damage, not merely the likelihood of such). If the claimant can prove she has suffered damage, she may also be able to claim for consequent distress (the law as it stands does not permit compensation for distress alone).

But, if the personal data in question has been compromised, or lost, through no attributable fault of the data controller, then no liability can attach to them. This may often be the case with a “rogue employee”, and is the reason that, often, criminal prosecution of an individual will not run parallel with civil claims or enforcement action against a data controller. I blogged on the contrary position recently, arguing that if someone was not criminally liable for data loss, then would the (civil) liability attach to the data controller? And, of course, it does not mean that the two cannot run in parallel – Tim Turner blogged last week on the civil MPN served on the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, after it was subject to a criminal act not by a rogue employee, but by a hacker. As Tim suggests, being victim of a criminal act does not give you a shield against enforcement action, when you are shown to have allowed the criminal act to happen, through contravening your obligations under the DPA.

In the case of Thames Valley Police, it may well be that there are details which were available to the court but not made public, and I do not intend to speculate on the chances of successful civil claims or enforcement action, but it will be an interesting case to watch develop.

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March 7, 2014 · 5:23 pm

Reflections on the monetary penalty notice served on British Pregnancy Advisory Service

On 28 February the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) served a Monetary Penalty Notice (MPN), pursuant to powers under section 55A of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), on the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, in the sum of £200,000 (which would be reduced to £160,000 if promptly paid). The ICO’s new release explains

An ICO investigation found the charity didn’t realise its own website was storing the names, address, date of birth and telephone number of people who asked for a call back for advice on pregnancy issues. The personal data wasn’t stored securely and a vulnerability in the website’s code allowed [a] hacker to access the system and locate the information.

The hacker threatened to publish the names of the individuals whose details he had accessed, though that was prevented after the information was recovered by the police following an injunction obtained by the BPAS

The back story to this is that the hacker in question was subsequently jailed for 32 months for offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 (no doubt the prosecutors recognised that the criminal sanctions under the DPA were too weedy to bother with).

The section 55A DPA powers are triggered where there has been a qualifying serious contravention by a data controller of its obligations under section 4(4) to comply with the data protection principles in Schedule One. The most pertinent of these in the instant case (and in the large majority of ICO MPNs) was the seventh

Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data

which extends to the need to, when contracting with someone to process data on your behalf, require them to take equivalent security measures and evidence this contractual provision in writing. As the ICO’s MPN says

BPAS failed to take appropriate technical and organisational measures against the unauthorised processing of personal data stored on the BPAS website such as having a detailed specification about the parameters of the CMS to ensure that either the website did not store any personal data or alternatively, that effective and appropriate security measures were applied such as storing administrative passwords securely; ensuring stated standards of communication confidentiality were met; carrying out appropriate security testing on the website which would have alerted them to the vulnerabilities that were present or ensuring that the underlying software supporting the website was kept up to date

(Interestingly, the MPN also makes clear that there was a contravention of the fifth principle – which provides that “personal data processed for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes”. This was because “the call back details were kept for five years longer than was necessary for [BPAS’s] purposes”).

 The original crime was a particularly nasty one – the offender appears to have had an ideological, or at least personal, opposition to abortion in general, and the apparently very real threat to publish people’s details, given to BPAS in highly sensitive circumstances, is probably what elevated the BPAS contravention to a level which justifies such a high sum being served on a charity. However, BPAS have announced that they intend to appeal, and their press release about this is interesting. It suggests that the appeal will be not about the issuing of the MPN, but about its amount (section 55B(5) DPA permits appeals on either basis):

We accept that no hacker should have been able to steal our data but we are horrified by the scale of the fine

but it goes on to make the valid point that, by serving an MPN of this large amount, the ICO potentially gives the offender something that he wanted – to harm the charity:

 It is appalling that a hacker who acted on the basis of his opposition to abortion should see his actions rewarded in this way

This, though, seems to be a matter of ethics, rather than law, but it will be interesting to note if the argument makes it in some form into the grounds of appeal. More likely, if the challenge is to be made solely on the amount (under section 55B(5)(b)), focus will fall on to the suggestion that

This fine seems out of proportion when compared with those levelled against other organisations who were not themselves the victims of a crime

Of course, by a circular argument, the “fine” would not have been served, if the data controller had not, by its omissions, permitted itself to be a victim of the crime.

An extra frisson is caused when one considers the compelling argument by the solicitor-advocates for Scottish Borders Council, who successfully helped the latter win an appeal of an MPN last year. Although their argument – that MPNs were more correctly to be considered criminal, as opposed to civil, penalties – did not fall to be decided by the First-tier Tribunal, it did observe that

One general question hovering over this appeal is whether proceedings in respect of monetary penalties are “criminal” in nature. There are certainly enough indications, not least in the title of the amending statute, [the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008] to make an arguable case for them being so…We have concluded that there is no need for us to make any decision or pronouncement in the abstract; but there is a need for us to be vigilant to ensure that the proceedings are fair

If this line of argument continues to be developed – that recipients of MPNs are entitled to be afforded the equivalent rights to fairness, of hearing under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, afforded to those accused of crimes – then MPNs, and the circumstances and manner in which they are served, may be subject to a much greater level of scrutiny, and the cash-strapped ICO may find itself under even more pressure from legal challenges.

These issues may be aired, and possibly determined, in the forthcoming appeal on the Upper Tribunal of the MPN served on Christopher Niebel, and subsequently overturned by the First-tier Tribunal.

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March 1, 2014 · 7:56 pm

Why no prison sentences for misuse of medical data?

So, the government, roused from its torpor by the public outrage at the care.data proposals, and the apparent sale of 47 million patient records to actuaries, is said to be proposing, as a form of reassurance, amendments to the Care Bill. The Telegraph reports that

Jeremy Hunt will unveil new laws to ensure that medical records can only be released when there is a “clear health benefit” rather than for “purely commercial” use by insurers and other companies.

Ministers will also bolster criminal sanctions for organisations which breach data protection laws by disclosing people’s personal data. Under a “one strike and you’re out” approach, they will be permanently banned from accessing NHS data

One needs to be aware that this is just a newspaper report, and as far as I know it hasn’t been confirmed by the minister or anyone else in the government, but if it is accurate, I fear it shows further contempt for public concerns about the risks to the confidentiality of their medical records.

The first of the reported amendments sounds like a statutory backing to the current assurances that patient data will only be made available to third parties if it is for the purposes that will benefit the health and social care system (see FAQ 39 on the Guide for GP Practices). It also sounds like a very difficult piece of legislation to draft, and it will be very interesting to see what the proposed amendment actually says – will it allow secondary use for commercial purposes, as long as the primary use is for a “clear health benefit”? and, crucially, how on earth will it be regulated and enforced? (will properly resourced regulators be allowed to audit third parties’ use of data? – I certainly hope so).

The second amendment implies that the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) will also be amended. This also sounds like a difficult provision to draft: the Telegraph says

Those that have committed even one prior offence involving patient data will be barred from accessing NHS medical records indefinitely as part of a “one strike and you’re out” approach

But what do we mean by “offence”? The Telegraph falls into the common error of thinking that the Information Commissioner’s Office’s (ICO’s) powers to serve monetary penalty notices (MPNs) to a maximum of £500,000 are criminal justice powers; they are not – MPNs are civil notices, and the money paid is not a “fine” but a penalty. The only relevant current criminal offence in the DPA is that of (in terms) deliberately or recklessly obtaining or disclosing personal data without authority of the data controller. This is an either-way offence, which means it currently carries a maximum sanction of a £5000 fine in a magistrates court, or an unlimited fine in Crown Court (it is very rare for cases to be tried in the latter though). Prosecutions under this section (55) are generally brought against individuals, because the offence involves obtaining or disclosing the data without the authority of the data controller. It is unlikely that a company would commit a section 55 offence. More likely is that a company would seriously contravene the DPA in a manner which would lead to a (civil) MPN, or more informal ICO enforcement action. More likely still is simply that the ICO would have made a finding of “unlikely to have complied” with the DPA, under section 42 – a finding which carries little weight. Are prior civil or informal action, or a section 42 “unlikely to have complied” assessment going to count for the “one strike and you’re out” approach? And even if they are, what is to stop miscreant individuals or companies functioning through proxies, or agents? or even simply lying to get access to the data?

Noteworthy by its absence in the Telegraph reports of the proposed amendments was any reference to the one change to data protection law which actually might have a deterrent effect on those who illegally obtain or disclose personal data – the possibility of being sent to prison. As I and others have written before, all that is needed to achieve this is for the government to commence Section 77 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, which would create the power to alter the penalty (including a custodial sentence) for a section 55 DPA offence. However, the government has long been lobbied by certain sections of the press industry not to do so, because of apparent fears that it would give the state the power to imprison investigative journalists (despite the fact that section 78 of the Criminal Justice Act 2008 – also uncommenced – creating a new defence for journalistic, literary or artistic purposes). The Information Commissioner has repeatedly called for the law to be changed so that there is a real sanction for serious criminal data protection offences, but to no avail.

Chris Pounder has argued that the custodial sentence provisions (discussion of which was kicked into the long grass which grew up in the aftermath of the Leveson inquiry) might never be introduced. Despite the calls for such strong penalties for misuse of medical data, from influential voices such as Ben Goldacre, the proposals for change outlined by the Telegraph seem to support Dr Pounder’s view.

One of the main criticisms of the disastrous public relations and communications regarding the care.data initiative is that people’s acute concerns about the security of their medical records have been dismissed with vague or misleading reassurances. With the announcement of these vague and probably ineffectual proposed legal sanctions, what a damned shame that that looks to be continuing.

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January 18, 2014 · 11:11 am

If not that, then this?

Does the dropping of criminal charges against police officers under data protection and computer misuse legislation open the door to investigation of their employer’s civil liabilities?

The BBC reports that criminal charges have been dropped against three Nottinghamshire police officers. The charges appear to have been originally brought under the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) and Computer Misuse Act 1990 (CMA), and, according to the Police Federation it seems they were dropped because

prosecutors had found issues with training and advice on data protection for officers

Under section 55 of the DPA it is an offence to knowingly or recklessly, without the consent of the data controller, obtain or disclose personal data or the information contained in personal data. But the elements of the offence are not made out if the person doing this acted, for instance, in the reasonable belief that he or she had a lawful right to obtain or disclose the data, or if the obtaining was necessary for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime. Similarly, the offence of unauthorised access to computer material under section 1 of the CMA is only committed if the person knows that the access is unauthorised. If inadequate training and advice on access to data is given to employees of a data controller, then it will be difficult – as this story seems to reveal – to bring prosecutions. Effectively, the mens rea element of the offence is lacking.

However, perceptive readers of this blog might have noticed something: if incidents of inappropriate access to personal data have occurred, as appears to have been the case here, and the individuals accessing the data have been inadequately trained, does that not raise issues about the employer’s (the data controller’s) compliance with the seventh data protection principle in Schedule One of the DPA? This provides that

Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has repeatedly stressed that appropriate staff training is essential for compliance with the seventh principle. The ICO has the power, under section 55A of the DPA, to serve a civil monetary penalty notice on a data controller which has seriously contravened the DPA, where the contravention is of a kind likely to cause substantial damage or substantial distress. One wonders whether the ICO will now look into Nottinghamshire Police’s compliance with the Act, in view of the fact that incidents serious enough to bring now-dropped criminal charge took place, and the fact that they appear to have taken place against a background of inadequate staff training.

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December 14, 2013 · 9:28 am

Data protection compensation – an alternative route?

Compensation for data protection breaches can be difficult to secure – but if the data controller is a public authority there may be an alternative to legal claims

One of the outcomes of what was by any standards a disastrous breach of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) was announced this week, when Hodge Jones & Allen LLP (who might want to proofread their press releases a bit better) issued a statement saying that they had secured compensation payments totalling £43,000 for fourteen residents who had brought claims against Islington Council. They were among fifty residents whose personal data was mistakenly given to ten people upon whom the Council was serving anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs). As the Islington Gazette reported at the time

council staff passed details of 51 people, many of whom had complained about antisocial behaviour (ASB) on the council’s flagship ASB hotline, to 10 thugs who had been causing trouble on the Andover estate, off Seven Sisters Road, Holloway…The gang, who had been smoking drugs and abusing passers-by, now have the names, street names and phone numbers where given of the residents, after the information was inadvertently attached to injunctions banning them from the estate…Police activity has been stepped up on the Andover, but many victims of the breach are from other areas.

The Gazette also reported that six families were to be rehoused, no doubt at considerable cost to the Council.

The law firm’s announcement (which also appears to relate to claims made by people who, in a separate incident involving the same council, had their personal data inadvertently exposed on a website) means, of course, that any claims will not go to trial, and we will not get the chance of a judicial determination of whether, or to what extent it is possible for claimants in these circumstances to gain compensation for pure distress, in the absence of actual damage.

Data Protection lawyers and practitioners will be well aware of this issue, and I wrote about it earlier this year. To crib my own post:

Section 13(1) of the Data Protection Act (DPA) provides a right to compensation for a data subject who has suffered damage by reason of any contravention by a data controller of any of the requirements of the Act.  The domestic authorities are clear that “damage” in this sense consists of pecuniary loss. Thus, section 13(1) is a “gateway” to a further right of compensation under section 13(2)(a), for distress. The right to distress compensation cannot be triggered unless section 13(1) damage has been suffered….[the position is unclear as to] whether nominal, as opposed to substantial, damages under section 13(1), could suffice to be a gateway to distress compensation, and, indeed, whether the DPA effectively transposes the requirements of the European Data Protection Directive to which it gives effect

In the instant cases, it is actually possible that substantial actual damage could have been suffered, but, more probably, these again were cases where (no doubt very high levels of) distress would have lacked compensation for want of the section 13(1) gateway.

In terms of the Council itself, as data controller, it was served by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) with a monetary penalty notice (MPN) of £70,000 for the DPA contravention which led to the “website incident”, and it appears that enforcement action may well result from the ASBO incident (one wonders if the ICO was awaiting the outcome of these legal claims). The ICO will need to determine whether it was a serious contravention of the DPA, of a kind likely to cause substantial damage or substantial distress (for analysis of what this requires, see my recent post here). Such MPNs do not though, in any case, compensate victims, but serve to punish the data controller (and the money goes into the government’s consolidated fund).

The Local Government Ombudsman

One does not know what the specific arrangements were between the claimants and their lawyers, but, unless the work was pro bono some fees will no doubt be owed from the former to the latter. It does occur to me that the claimants had an alternative way of seeking a remedy. The Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) investigates complaints made by people alleging administrative fault (“maladministration”) causing injustice, arising from actions or inactions of local authorities. In 2008 the LGO issued a report following investigation of a complaint that Basildon Council had

published personal and sensitive information about traveller families and their children on its website and in a report that was considered in the open part of a Council committee meeting, where copies were available to members of the public and the press who attended. The information included medical details, and the names and ages of all the children living on the site

But what is particularly interesting is that the LGO’s investigation was informed by a prior finding by the ICO in this matter (uncontested at the time by the Council) that the Council had been likely to have contravened the first data protection principle. The LGO has the power to recommend compensation payments, and in this case recommended each complainant be paid £300. Those payments were eventually effected, albeit after judicial review proceedings (an LGO recommendation is not actually binding on a council, although in the vast majority of cases they are complied).

It does seem to me that the Islington claimants could possibly have gained similar, or more compensation, by making a complaint to the LGO. It also seems to me that – where a DPA contravention by a local authority causes distress but no damage – aggrieved data subjects could consider whether the LGO could assist. And on a similar basis, where the contravention has been by a government department, or the NHS, or some other public bodies, whether the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman could assist.

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December 13, 2013 · 7:18 am

Implications of the Home Office data breach

What sanctions might result from the recent Home Office data breach, and how does it relate to the transparency agenda?

News emerged yesterday, through the rather unusual route of a statement to Parliament by Mark Harper, Minister for Immigration, that a spreadsheet containing the personal information of almost 1600 people had been inadvertently published by the Home Office on a government website. The minister’s statement says

between 15 and 28 October 2013 some personal data was available on the Home Office website as part of a spreadsheet alongside the regular data set in error. This was identified by Home Office officials on 28 October 2013 and the personal information was  removed immediately. The personal data related to the names of 1,598 main applicants in the family returns process, their date of birth and limited details about their immigration case type and status

On these conceded facts this would appear to be a clear breach of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), and, specifically, the principles of Schedule 1 to the Act which require that processing be fair and lawful, and that appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data. But what are the implications of this?

By virtue of section 4(4) of the DPA a data controller – in this instance the Home Office – must comply with those principles. A serious contravention of them, of a kind which is likely to cause substantial damage or substantial distress, can (by section 55A) invoke the powers of the Information Commissioner’s Office (IC) to serve a monetary penalty notice, to a maximum of £500,000. Whether the IC would exercise his discretion to do so would depend on various factors. Firstly, he would need to satisfy himself whether the personal data involved was “sensitive”. Sensitive personal data is afforded greater protection by the DPA, and breaches involving it are accordingly more serious. We are told that the information involved here consisted of people’s names, dates of birth, and their immigration status. Information about a person’s racial or ethnic origin is sensitive personal data – could one derive or infer that from the mistakenly disclosed information? This will be an important question to answer. But, additionally and more simply, it seems that these were “illegal immigrants” – the data was related to immigration family returns, and this would certainly seem to imply either the commission or alleged commission of an offence by those whose data was exposed, and this would also move the data into the category of “sensitive”.

Whether the apparent contravention was likely to cause substantial damage or substantial distress is less clear. The minister points out that there appear to have been fewer than thirty page views, but that we don’t know whether any of those people accessed or downloaded the data. But this perhaps overlooks the part of the statutory scheme which talks about whether the contravention was “of a kind likely” to cause the damage or distress. If for instance, this incident, which we are told is being investigated by the IC, is a symptom of inappropriate or insufficient data security measures, then that factor, rather than this discrete incident, could potentially give rise to sanctions. Also relevant might be what efforts the Home Office has taken to ensure that cached versions of the data have been removed from the internet – it is remarkably easy for information quickly to be captured and mirrored elsewhere, by automated web services.

The IC’s powers are not limited, however, to issuing monetary penalties. He can also issue enforcement notices requiring data controllers to take specified actions, and a breach of an enforcement notice can be a criminal offence. Less seriously, he can simply make a determination as to whether there is likely to have been a breach of the DPA. And he can take informal action, requiring a responsible person at the ministry to sign an undertaking to improve compliance.

The transparency agenda

What I also find noteworthy is that the minister prefaces his statement with remarks about the government’s commitment

to openness and transparency to enable the public to hold the government and other public bodies to account. This government has made more data available than ever before…

These are laudable aims and actions, but, I have written before that the transparency agenda carries with it risks that, in the rush to publish more and more data, there will be privacy and data protection breaches. And if the government and the IC, as regulator, do not do more to alert people to these risks they must be aware that they risk being seen as complicit in such breaches. As I said in my piece for The Guardian

The IC must work with the government to offer advice direct to chief executives and those responsible for risk…So far these disclosure errors do not appear to have led to harm to those individuals whose private information was compromised, but, without further action, I fear it is only a matter of time.

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November 18, 2013 · 4:46 pm

In which I ask the ICO for a Decision Notice

In September of this year I blogged about a request I made to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for details of which website some personal data had been inadvertently uploaded to, by a council employee, which had led to a monetary penalty notice. I have now had the ICO’s response to my internal review. I do not have (and haven’t sought) permission to upload that response, but suffice to say it doesn’t uphold my complaint. For those of you still awake I append my response to it here:

I am reluctantly now applying to the Commissioner for a decision whether my request for information has been dealt with in accordance with the requirements of Part I of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).
 
I am of the view that you do have lawful authority to disclose the information, and, therefore, section 59(1) of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) is not engaged (and by extension nor is the substantive exemption claimed: section 44 of FOIA). Before I give my reasons I would just like to clarify an error on my part: I erred in my request for internal review when I queried whether section 59(1)(c) DPA was met. What I meant was that I accepted that sections 59(1)(a-c) were met, but I doubted whether there was a lack of lawful authority for the ICO to disclose.
 
My reasons why I believe you do have lawful authority to disclose are substantially the same as I gave in the rest of my request for internal review. I will repeat them here for completeness’ sake:
 
Section 59(2)(e) says that disclosure is made with lawful authority if “having regard to the rights and freedoms or legitimate interests of any person, the disclosure is necessary in the public interest”. I would argue that analysis of whether this provision permits disclosure requires a two-fold test. Firstly, is disclosure necessary in the public interest? Secondly, if it is, do the rights and freedoms or legitimate interests of any person militate against this public-interest disclosure?

On the first point, I am not aware of any direct authority on what “necessary” means in section 59(2)(e) of DPA, but I would argue that it imports the meaning adopted by leading European authorities. Thus, as per the high Court in Corporate Officer of the House of Commons v The Information Commissioner & Ors [2008] EWHC 1084 “‘necessary”…should reflect the meaning attributed to it by the European Court of Human Rights when justifying an interference with a recognised right, namely that there should be a pressing social need and that the interference was both proportionate as to means and fairly balanced as to ends”. It is my view that there is a pressing social need to recognise the risks of indavertent uploading to the internet, by public authorities and others, of sensitive personal data, especially when this is by automatic means. Other examples of recent incidents and enforcement action illustrate this. For instance, as your office is aware, there have been reports that a regional Citizens’ Advice Bureau has indavertently made available on the internet very large amounts of such data, probably because of a lack of technical knowledge or security which resulted in automatic caching by Google of numerous files https://informationrightsandwrongs.com/2013/09/24/citizens-advice-bureaucracy/. Also for instance, as you are aware, there have been many many examples of indavertent internet publishing of personal data in hidden cells in spreadsheets http://www.ico.org.uk/news/blog/2013/the-risk-of-revealing-too-much. There is a clear lack of public understanding of the risks of such indavertent disclosures, with a consequent risk to the privacy of individuals’ often highly sensitive personal data. Any information which the regulator of the DPA can disclose which informs and improves public understanding of these risks serves a pressing social need and makes the disclosure “necessary”.

On the second point, I simply fail to see what rights and freedoms or legitimate interests of any person can be engaged, let alone suffer a detriment by disclosing what public website the Council employee uploaded this to. If there are any, it would be helpful if your response to this Internal Review could address this. It may be that you would point to the information having been provided to you in confidence, but I similarly fail to see how that can be: was this an express obligation of confidence, or have you inferred it? In either case, I would question (per one the elements of the classic formulation for a cause of action in breach of confidence given by Megarry J in Coco v A.N.Clark (Engineers) Ltd [1969] R.P.C. 41) whether the information even has the necessary quality of confidence (this was a public website after all).

However, I make the following further observations.

You say “I consider that the public interest here has been largely, if not entirely, met by the issuing and publication of the Monetary Penalty Notice dated 27 August 2013, the publication of the ICO News release dated 30 August 2013, and other press coverage concerning this particular data breach and how it occurred. I do not consider that disclosure of the name of the website would further this to any significant extent”. However, these sources of information were noticeably lacking in detail about how exactly the rather bizarre and worrying circumstances described in the Monetary Penalty Notice (MPN) could have happened: automatic upload to cloud storage can happen, but normally this will be to private storage – automatic upload to a “public website” is rather alarming.

I note, in passing, some recent criticism of the level of detail, or lack of clarity, in MPNs made by the First-tier Tribunal (see para 17 of the Scottish Borders case, and, the Niebel case, effectively throughout).

I also note that you say “when considering the balance of the public interest in relation to section 59(2)(e) it has to be borne in mind that the threshold is very high because disclosure in contravention of section 59, by the Commissioner or a member of ICO staff may/will constitute a criminal offence under section 59(3)”. With respect, whether the Commissioner or a member of his staff might commit a criminal offence is not relevant to whether the public interest means disclosure is necessary. If disclosure is necessary section 59(1) does not apply, and no suggestion of a criminal offence can arise. Moreover, you say “unless there is ‘lawful authority’ to disclose the information, to do so would constitute a criminal offence” and “disclosure in contravention of section 59, by the Commissioner or a member of ICO staff may/will constitute a criminal offence under section 59(3)”, and “Releasing information of this nature without lawful authority would not only constitute a criminal offence…”: all of these omit the crucial mens rea aspect of that offence, which is that the disclosure would have to be made knowingly or recklessly.

You go on to say “There is a strong public interest in information being provided to the Commissioner in confidence, to enable him to carry out his statutory duty, remaining confidential and that this information will not be disclosed without lawful authority. Releasing information of this nature without lawful authority would not only constitute a criminal offence but would also undermine the regulatory function and powers of the ICO. It would damage public trust in the Commissioner’s processes and make organisations less willing to share information on a voluntary basis making it difficult for the ICO to operate an efficient and effective regulatory system”. This repeats the earlier assertions, or implications, that the information in question is “confidential” or has been “provided…in confidence”, which I continue to dispute for reasons previously given (and not controverted), and makes further assertions that disclosing such information now would “make organisations less willing to share information on a voluntary basis making it difficult for the ICO to operate an efficient and effective regulatory system”. There appears simply to be no basis for this “chilling effect” assertion (is there, for instance, evidence to back it up?).

Finally, I note that you say “we did consult with Aberdeen City Council and we do not have explicit consent for disclosure”. You do not say when this consultation took place, but it appears that Aberdeen at some point changed their mind on this, because on 15 October they disclosed the information to me under FOIA (see https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ico_monetary_penalty_notice#outgoing-307019). Clearly, this means that I do not continue to seek disclosure. It also explains why I say I make this application reluctantly (I have no wish to have you, or me, epxend time and resources unnecessarily). But I do wish to dispute that my request to you was handled according to requirements in part 1 of FOIA.

I am happy to provide any further information you might need.
with best wishes

etc

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