Tag Archives: data protection

November 17, 2014 · 4:59 pm

Do your research. Properly

Campaigning group Big Brother Watch have released a report entitled “NHS Data Breaches”. It purports to show the extent of such “breaches” within the NHS. However it fails properly to define its terms, and uses very questionable methodology. I think, most worryingly, this sort of flawed research could lead to a reluctance on the part of public sector data controllers to monitor and record data security incidents.

As I checked my news alerts over a mug of contemplative coffee last Friday morning, the first thing I noticed was an odd story from a Bedfordshire news outlet:

Bedford Hospital gets clean bill of health in new data protection breach report, unlike neighbouring counties…From 2011 to 2014 the hospital did not breach the data protection act once, unlike neighbours Northampton where the mental health facility recorded 346 breaches, and Cambridge University Hospitals which registered 535 (the third worst in the country).

Elsewhere I saw that one NHS Trust had apparently breached data protection law 869 times in the same period, but many others, like Bedford Hospital had not done so once. What was going on – are some NHS Trusts so much worse in terms of legal compliance than others? Are some staffed by people unaware and unconcerned about patient confidentiality? No. What was going on was that campaigning group Big Brother Watch had released a report with flawed methodology, a misrepresentation of the law and flawed conclusions, which I fear could actually lead to poorer data protection compliance in the future.

I have written before about the need for clear terminology when discussing data protection compliance, and of the confusion which can be caused by sloppiness. The data protection world is very found of the word “breach”, or “data breach”, and it can be a useful term to describe a data security incident involving compromise or potential compromise of personal data, but the confusion arises because it can also be used to describe, or assumed to apply to, a breach of the law, a breach of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). But a data security incident is not necessarily a breach of a legal obligation in the DPA: the seventh data protection principle in Schedule One requires that

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

And section 4(4) of the DPA obliges a data controller to comply with the Schedule One data protection principles. This means that when appropriate technical and organisational measures are taken but unauthorised or unlawful processing, or accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data nonetheless occurs, the data controller is not in breach of its obligations (at least under the seventh principle). This distinction between a data security incident, and a breach, or contravention, of legal obligations, is one that the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) itself has sometimes failed to appreciate (as the First-tier Tribunal found in the Scottish Borders Council case EA/2012/0212). Confusion only increases when one takes into account that under The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (PECR) which are closely related to the DPA, and which deal with data security in – broadly – the telecoms arena, there is an actual legislative provision (regulation 2, as amended) which talks in terms of a “personal data breach”, which is

a breach of security leading to the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to, personal data transmitted, stored or otherwise processed in connection with the provision of a public electronic communications service

and regulation 5A obliges a relevant data controller to inform the ICO when there has been a “personal data breach”. It is important to note, however, that a “personal data breach” under PECR will not be a breach, or contravention, of the seventh DPA data protection principle, provided the data controller took appropriate technical and organisational to safeguard the data.

Things get even more complex when one bears in mind that the draft European General Data Protection Regulation proposes a similar approach as PECR, and defines a “personal data breach” in similar terms as above (simply removing the words “in connection with the provision of a public electronic communications service“).

Notwithstanding this, the Big Brother Watch report is entitled “NHS Data Breaches”, so one would hope that it would have been clear about its own terms. It has led to a lot of coverage, with media outlets picking up on headline-grabbing claims of “7225 breaches” in the NHS between 2011 and 2014, which is the equivalent to “6 breaches a day”. But when one looks at the methodology used, serious questions are raised about the research. It used Freedom of Information requests to all NHS Trusts and Bodies, and the actual request was in the following terms

1. The number of a) medical personnel and b) non-medical personnel that have been convicted for breaches of the Data Protection Act.

2. The number of a) medical personnel and b) non-medical personnel that have had their employment terminated for breaches of the Data Protection Act.

3. The number of a) medical personnel and b) non-medical personnel that have been disciplined internally but have not been prosecuted for breaches of the Data Protection Act.

4. The number of a) medical personnel and b) non-medical personnel that have resigned during disciplinary procedures.

5. The number of instances where a breach has not led to any disciplinary action.

The first thing to note is that, in broad terms, the only way that an individual NHS employee can “breach the Data Protection Act” is by committing a criminal offence under section 55 of unlawfully obtaining personal data without the consent of the (employer) data controller. All the other relevant legal obligations under the DPA are ones attaching to the NHS body itself, as data controller. Thus, by section 4(4) the NHS body has an obligation to comply with the data protection principles in Schedule One of the DPA, not individual employees. And so, except in the most serious of cases, where an employee acts without the consent of the employer to unlawfully obtain personal data, individual employees, whether medical or non-medical personnel, cannot as a matter of law “breach the Data Protection Act”.

One might argue that it is easy to infer that what Big Brother Watch meant to ask for was information about the number of times when actions of individual employees meant that their employer NHS body had breached its obligations under the DPA, and, yes, that it probably what was meant, but the incorrect terms and lack of clarity vitiated the purported research from the start. This is because NHS bodies have to comply with the NHS/Department of Health Information Governance Toolkit. This toolkit actually requires NHS bodies to record serious data security incidents even where those incidents did not, in fact, constitute a breach of the body’s obligations under the DPA (i.e. incidents might be recorded which were “near misses” or which did not constitute a failure of the obligation to comply with the seventh, data security, principle).

The results Big Brother Watch got in response to their ambiguous and inaccurately termed FOI request show that some NHS bodies clearly interpreted it expansively, to encompass all data security incidents, while others – those with zero returns in any of the fields, for instance – clearly interpreted it restrictively. In fact, in at least one case an NHS Trust highlighted that its return included “near misses”, but these were still categorised by Big Brother Watch as “breaches”.

And this is not unimportant: data security and data protection are of immense importance in the NHS, which has to handle huge amounts of highly sensitive personal data, often under challenging circumstances. Awful contraventions of the DPA do occur, but so too do individual and unavoidable instances of human error. The best data controllers will record and act on the latter, even though they don’t give rise to liability under the DPA, and they should be applauded for doing so. Naming and shaming NHS bodies on the basis of such flawed research methodology might well achieve Big Brother Watch’s aim of publicising its call for greater sanctions for criminal offences, but I worry that it might lead to some data controllers being wary of recording incidents, for fear that they will be disclosed and misinterpreted in the pursuit of questionable research.

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November 8, 2014 · 10:18 am

So farewell then #samaritansradar…

…or should that be au revoir?

With an interestingly timed announcement (18:00 on a Friday evening) Samaritans conceded that they were pulling their much-heralded-then-much–criticised app “Samaritans Radar”, and, as if some of us didn’t feel conflicted enough criticising such a normally laudable charity, their Director of Policy Joe Ferns managed to get a dig in, hidden in what was purportedly an apology:

We are very aware that the range of information and opinion, which is circulating about Samaritans Radar, has created concern and worry for some people and would like to apologise to anyone who has inadvertently been caused any distress

So, you see, it wasn’t the app, and the creepy feeling of having all one’s tweets closely monitored for potentially suicidal expressions, which caused concern and worry and distress – it was all those nasty people expressing a range of information and opinion. Maybe if we’d all kept quiet the app could have continued on its unlawful and unethical merry way.

However, although the app has been pulled, it doesn’t appear to have gone away

We will…be testing a number of potential changes and adaptations to the app to make it as safe and effective as possible for both subscribers and their followers

There is a survey at the foot of this page which seeks feedback and comment. I’ve completed it, and would urge others to do so. I’ve also given my name and contact details, because one of my main criticisms of the launch of the app was that there was no evidence that Samaritans had taken advice from anyone on its data protection implications – and I’m happy to do so for no fee. As Paul Bernal says, “[Samaritans] need to talk to the very people who brought down the app: the campaigners, the Twitter activists and so on”.

Data protection law’s place in our digital lives is of profound importance, and of profound interest to me. Let’s not forget that its genesis in the 1960s and 1970s was in the concerns raised by the extraordinary advances that computing brought to data analysis. For me some of the most irritating counter-criticism during the recent online debates about Samaritans Radar was from people who equated what the app did to mere searching of tweets, or searching for keywords. As I said before, the sting of this app lay in the overall picture – it was developed, launched and promoted by Samaritans – and in the overall processing of data which went on – it monitored tweets, identified potentially worrying ones and pushed this information to a third party, all without the knowledge of the data subject.

But also irritating were comments from people who told us that other organisations do similar analytics, for commercial reasons, so why, the implication went, shouldn’t Samaritans do it for virtuous ones? It is no secret that an enormous amount of analysis takes place of information on social media, and people should certainly be aware of this (see Adrian Short’s excellent piece here for some explanation), but the fact that it can and does take place a) doesn’t mean that it is necessarily lawful, nor that the law is impotent within the digital arena, and b) doesn’t mean that it is necessarily ethical. And for both those reasons Samaritans Radar was an ill-judged experiment that should never have taken place as it did. If any replacement is to be both ethical and lawful a lot of work, and a lot of listening, needs to be done.

The views in this post (and indeed all 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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November 5, 2014 · 8:39 am

Samaritans cannot deny being data controller for #samaritansradar

The views in this post (and indeed all posts on this blog) are my personal ones, and do not represent the views of any organisation I am involved with.

So, Samaritans continue to support the #samaritansradar app, about which I, and many others, have already written. A large number of people suffering from, or with experience of mental health problems, have pleaded with Samaritans to withdraw the app, which monitors the tweets of the people one follows on twitter, applies an algorithm to identify tweets from potentially vulnerable people, and emails that information to the app user, all without the knowledge of the person involved. As Paul Bernal has eloquently said, this is not really an issue about privacy, and nor is it about data protection – it is about the threat many vulnerable people feel from the presence of the app. Nonetheless, privacy and data protection law, in part, are about the rights of the vulnerable; last night (4 November) Samaritans issued their latest sparse statement, part of which dealt with data protection:

We have taken the time to seek further legal advice on the issues raised. Our continuing view is that Samaritans Radar is compliant with the relevant data protection legislation for the following reasons:

o   We believe that Samaritans are neither the data controller or data processor of the information passing through the app

o   All information identified by the app is available on Twitter, in accordance with Twitter’s Ts&Cs (link here). The app does not process private tweets.

o   If Samaritans were deemed to be a data controller, given that vital interests are at stake, exemptions from data protection law are likely to apply

It is interesting that there is reference here to “further” legal advice: none of the previous statements from Samaritans had given any indication that legal or data protection advice had been sought prior to the launch of the app. It would be enormously helpful to discussion of the issue if Samaritans actually disclosed their advice, but I doubt very much that they will do so. Nonetheless, their position appears to be at odds with the legal authorities.

In May this year the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) gave its ruling in the Google Spain case. The most widely covered aspect of that case was, of course, the extent of a right to be forgotten – a right to require Google to remove search terms in certain specified cases. But the CJEU also was asked to rule on the question of whether a search engine, such as Google, was a data controller in circumstances in which it engages in the indexing of web pages. Before the court Google argued that

the operator of a search engine cannot be regarded as a ‘controller’ in respect of that processing since it has no knowledge of those data and does not exercise control over the data

and this would appear to be a similar position to that adopted by Samaritans in the first bullet point above. However, the CJEU dismissed Google’s argument, holding that

the operator of a search engine ‘collects’ such data which it subsequently ‘retrieves’, ‘records’ and ‘organises’ within the framework of its indexing programmes, ‘stores’ on its servers and, as the case may be, ‘discloses’ and ‘makes available’ to its users in the form of lists of search results…It is the search engine operator which determines the purposes and means of that activity and thus of the processing of personal data that it itself carries out within the framework of [the activity at issue] and which must, consequently, be regarded as the ‘controller’ in respect of that processing

Inasmuch as I understand how it works, I would submit that #samaritansradar, while not a search engine as such, collects data (personal data), records and organises it, stores it on servers and discloses it to its users in the form of a result. The app has been developed by and launched by Samaritans, it carries their name and seeks to further their aims: it is clearly “their” app, and they are, as clearly, a data controller with attendant legal responsibilities and liabilities. In further proof of this Samaritans introduced, after the app launch and in response to outcry, a “whitelist” of twitter users who have specifically informed Samaritans that they do not want their tweets to be monitored (update on 30 October). If Samaritans are effectively saying they have no role in the processing of the data, how on earth would such a whitelist be expected to work?

And it’s interesting to consider the apparent alternative view that they are implicitly putting forward. If they are not data controller, then who is? The answer must be the users who download and run the app, who would attract all the legal obligations that go with being a data controller. The Samaritans appear to want to back out of the room, leaving app users to answer all the awkward questions.1

Also very interesting is that Samaritans clearly accept that others might have a different view to theirs on the issue of controllership; they suggest that if they were held to be a data controller they would avail themselves of “exemptions” in data protection law relating to “vital interest” to legitimise their activities. One presumes this to be a reference to certain conditions in Schedule 2 and 3 of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). Those schedules contain conditions which must be met, in order for the processing of, respectively, personal data and sensitive personal data, to be fair and lawful. As we are here clearly talking about sensitive personal data (personal data relating to someone’s physical or mental health is classed as sensitive), let us look at the relevant condition in Schedule 3:

The processing is necessary—
(a)in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject or another person, in a case where—
(i)consent cannot be given by or on behalf of the data subject, or
(ii)the data controller cannot reasonably be expected to obtain the consent of the data subject, or
(b)in order to protect the vital interests of another person, in a case where consent by or on behalf of the data subject has been unreasonably withheld

Samaritans alternative defence founders on the first four words: in what way can this processing be necessary to protect vital interests? The Information Commissioner’s Office explains that this condition only applies

in cases of life or death, such as where an individual’s medical history is disclosed to a hospital’s A&E department treating them after a serious road accident

The evidence suggests this app is actually delivering a very large number of false positives (as it’s based on what seems to be a crude keyword algorithm, this is only to be expected). Given that, and, indeed, given that Samaritans have – expressly – no control over what happens once the app notifies a user of a concerning tweet, it is absolutely preposterous to suggest that the processing is necessary to protect people’s vital interests. Moreover, the condition above also explains that it can only be relied on where consent cannot be given by the data subject or the controller cannot reasonably be expected to obtain consent. Nothing prevents Samaritans from operating an app which would do the same thing (flag a tweet of concern) but basing it on a consent model, whereby someone agrees that their tweets will be monitored in that way. Indeed, such a model would fit better with Samaritans stated aim of allowing people to “lead the conversation at their own pace”. It is clear, nonetheless, that consent could be sought for this processing, but that Samaritans have failed to design an app which allows it to be sought.

The Information Commissioner’s Office is said to be looking into the issues raised by Samaritans’ app. It may be that it will only be through legal enforcement action that it will actually be – as I think it should – removed. But it would be extremely sad if it came to that. It should be removed voluntarily by Samaritans, so they can rethink, re-programme, take full legal advice, but – most importantly – listen to the voices of the most vulnerable, who feel so threatened and betrayed by the app.

1On a strict and nuanced analysis of data protection law users of the app probably are data controllers, acting as joint ones with Samaritans. However, given the regulatory approach of the Information Commissioner they would probably be able to avail themselves of the general exemption from all of the DPA for processing which is purely domestic (although even that is arguably wrong). These are matters for another blog post however, and the fact that users might be held to be data controllers doesn’t alter the fact that Samaritans are, and in a much clearer way

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October 24, 2014 · 3:02 pm

The Crown Estate and behavioural advertising

A new app for Regent Street shoppers will deliver targeted behavioural advertising – is it processing personal data?

My interest was piqued by a story in the Telegraph that

Regent Street is set to become the first shopping street in Europe to pioneer a mobile phone app which delivers personalised content to shoppers during their visit

Although this sounds like my idea of hell, it will no doubt appeal to some people. It appears that a series of Bluetooth beacons will deliver mobile content (for which, read “targeted behavioural advertising”) to the devices of users who have installed the Regent Street app. Users will indicate their shopping preferences, and a profile of them will be built by the app.

Electronic direct marketing in the UK is ordinarily subject to compliance with The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (“PECR”). However, the definition of “electronic mail” in PECR is “any text, voice, sound or image message sent over a public electronic communications network or in the recipient’s terminal equipment until it is collected by the recipient and includes messages sent using a short message service”. In 2007 the Information Commissioner, upon receipt of advice, changed his previous stance that Bluetooth marketing would be caught by PECR, to one under which it would not be caught, because Bluetooth does not involve a “public electronic communications network”. Nonetheless, general data protection law relating to consent to direct marketing will still apply, and the Direct Marketing Association says

Although Bluetooth is not considered to fall within the definition of electronic mail under the current PECR, in practice you should consider it to fall within the definition and obtain positive consent before using it

This reference to “positive consent” reflects the definition in the Data Protection directive, which says that it is

any freely given specific and informed indication of his wishes by which the data subject signifies his agreement to personal data relating to him being processed

And that word “informed” is where I start to have a possible problem with this app. Ever one for thoroughness, I decided to download it, to see what sort of privacy information it provided. There wasn’t much, but in the Terms and Conditions (which don’t appear to be viewable until you download the app) it did say

The App will create a profile for you, known as an autoGraph™, based on information provided by you using the App. You will not be asked for any personal information (such as an email address or phone number) and your profile will not be shared with third parties

autograph (don’t forget the™) is software which, in its words “lets people realise their interests, helping marketers drive response rates”, and it does so by profiling its users

In under one minute without knowing your name, email address or any personally identifiable information, autograph can figure out 5500 dimensions about you – age, income, likes and dislikes – at over 90% accuracy, allowing businesses to serve what matters to you – offers, programs, music… almost anything

Privacy types might notice the jarring words in that blurb. Apparently the software can quickly “figure out” thousands of potential identifiers about a user, without knowing “any personally identifiable information”. To me, that’s effectively saying “we will create a personally identifiable profile of you, without using any personally identifiable information”. The fact of the matter is that people’s likes, dislikes, preferences, choices etc (and does this app capture device information, such as IMEI?) can all be used to build up a picture which renders them identifiable. It is trite law that “personal data” is data which relate to a living individual who can be identified from those data or from those data and other information which is in the possession of, or is likely to come into the possession of, the data controller. The Article 29 Working Party (made up of representatives from the data protection authorities of each EU member state) delivered an Opinion in 2010 on online behavioural advertising which stated that

behavioural advertising is based on the use of identifiers that enable the creation of very detailed user profiles which, in most cases, will be deemed personal data

If this app is, indeed, processing personal data, then I would suggest that the limited Terms and Conditions (which users are not even pointed to when they download the app, let alone be invited to agree them) are inadequate to mean that a user is freely giving specific and informed consent to the processing. And if the app is processing personal data to deliver electronic marketing failure to comply with PECR might not matter, but failure to comply with the Data Protection Act 1998 brings potential liability to legal claims and enforcement action.

The Information Commissioner last year produced good guidance on Privacy in Mobile Apps which states that

Users of your app must be properly informed about what will happen to their personal data if they install and use the app. This is part of Principle 1 in the DPA which states that “Personal data shall be processed fairly and lawfully”. For processing to be fair, the user must have suitable information about the processing and they must to be told about the purposes

The relevant data controller for Regent Street Online happens to be The Crown Estate. On the day that the Queen sent her first tweet, it is interesting to consider the extent to which her own property company are in compliance with their obligations under privacy laws.

This post has been edited as a result of comments on the original, which highlighted that PECR does not, in strict terms, apply to Bluetooth marketing

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September 29, 2014 · 1:18 pm

Brooks Newmark, the press, and “the other woman”

UPDATE: 30.09.14 Sunday Mirror editor Lloyd Embley is reported by the BBC and other media outlets to have apologised for the use of women’s photos (it transpires that two women’s images appropriated), saying

We thought that pictures used by the investigation were posed by models, but we now know that some real pictures were used. At no point has the Sunday Mirror published any of these images, but we would like to apologise to the women involved for their use in the investigation

What I think is interesting here is the implicit admission that (consenting) models could have been used in the fake profiles. Does this mean therefore, the processing of the (non-consenting) women’s personal data was not done in the reasonable belief that it was in the public interest?

Finally, I think it’s pretty shoddy that former Culture Secretary Maria Miller resorts to victim-blaming, and missing the point, when she is reported to have said that the story “showed why people had to be very careful about the sorts of images they took of themselves and put on the internet”

END UPDATE.

With most sex scandals involving politicians, there is “the other person”. For every Profumo, a Keeler;  for every Mellor, a de Sancha; for every Clinton, a Lewinsky. More often than not the rights and dignity of these others are trampled in the rush to revel in outrage at the politicians’ behaviour. But in the latest, rather tedious, such scandal, the person whose rights have been trampled was not even “the other person”, because there was no other person. Rather, it was a Swedish woman* whose image was appropriated by a journalist without her permission or even her knowledge. This raises the question of whether such use, by the journalist, and the Sunday Mirror, which ran the exposé, was in accordance with their obligations under data protection and other privacy laws.

The story run by the Sunday Mirror told of how a freelance journalist set up a fake social media profile, purportedly of a young PR girl called Sophie with a rather implausible interest in middle-aged Tory MPs. He apparently managed to snare the Minister for Civil Society and married father of five, Brooks Newmark, and encourage him into sending explicit photographs of himself. The result was that the newspaper got a lurid scoop, and the Minister subsequently resigned. Questions are being asked about the ethics of the journalism involved, and there are suggestions that this could be the first difficult test for IPSO, the new Independent Press Standards Organisation.

But for me much the most unpleasant part of this unpleasant story was that the journalist appears to have decided to attach to the fake twitter profile the image of a Swedish woman. It’s not clear where he got this from, but it is understood that the same image had apparently already appeared on several fake Facebook accounts (it is not suggested, I think, that the same journalist was responsible for those accounts). The woman is reported to be distressed at the appropriation:

It feels really unpleasant…I have received lot of emails, text messages and phone calls from various countries on this today. It feels unreal…I do not want to be exploited in this way and someone has used my image like this feels really awful, both for me and the others involved in this. [Google translation of original Swedish]

Under European and domestic law the image of an identifiable individual is their personal data. Anyone “processing” such data as a data controller (“the 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”) has to do so in accordance with the law. Such processing as happened here, both by the freelance journalist, when setting up and operating the social media account(s), and by the Sunday Mirror, in publishing the story, is covered by the UK Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). This will be the case even though the person whose image was appropriated is in Sweden. The DPA requires, among other things, that processing of personal data be “fair and lawful”. It affords aggrieved individuals the right to bring civil claims for compensation for damage and distress arising from contraventions of data controllers’ obligations under the DPA. It also affords them the right to ask the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for an assessment of the likelihood (or not) that processing was in compliance with the DPA.

However, section 32 of the DPA also gives journalism a very broad exemption from almost all of the Act, if the processing is undertaken with a view to publication, and the data controller reasonably believes that publication would be in the public interest and that compliance with the DPA would be incompatible with the purposes of journalism. As the ICO says

The scope of the exemption is very broad. It can disapply almost all of the DPA’s provisions, and gives the media a significant leeway to decide for themselves what is in the public interest

The two data controllers here (the freelancer and the paper) would presumably have little problem satisfying a court, or the ICO, that when it came to processing of Brooks Newmark’s personal data, they acted in the reasonable belief that the public interest justified the processing. But one wonders to what extent they even considered the processing of (and associated intrusion into the private life of) the Swedish woman whose image was appropriated. Supposing they didn’t even consider this processing – could they reasonably say they that they reasonably believed it to have been in the public interest?

These are complex questions, and the breadth and ambit of the section 32 exemption are likely to be tested in litigation between the mining and minerals company BSG and the campaigning group Global Witness (currently stalled/being considered at the ICO). But even if a claim or complaint under DPA would be a tricky one to make, there are other legal issues raised. Perhaps in part because of the breadth of the section 32 DPA exemption (and perhaps because of the low chance of significant damages under the DPA), claims of press intrusion into private lives are more commonly brought under the cause of action of “misuse of private information “, confirmed – it would seem – as a tort, in the ruling of Mr Justice Tugendhat in Vidal Hall and Ors v Google Inc [2014] EWHC 13 (QB), earlier this year. Damage awards for successful claims in misuse of private information have been known to be in the tens of thousands of pounds – most notably recently an award of £10,000 for Paul Weller’s children, after photographs taken covertly and without consent had been published in the Mail Online.

IPSO expects journalists to abide by the Editor’s Code, Clause 3 of which says

i) Everyone is entitled to respect for his or her private and family life, home, health and correspondence, including digital communications.

ii) Editors will be expected to justify intrusions into any individual’s private life without consent. Account will be taken of the complainant’s own public disclosures of information

and the ICO will take this Code into account when considering complaints about journalistic processing of personal data. One notes that “account will be taken of the complainant’s own public disclosures of information”, but one hopes that this would not be seen to justify the unfair and unethical appropriation of images found elsewhere on the internet.

*I’ve deliberately, although rather pointlessly – given their proliferation in other media – avoided naming the woman in question, or posting her photograph

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September 13, 2014 · 6:17 pm

Dancing to the beat of the Google drum

With rather wearying predictability, certain parts of the media are in uproar about the removal by Google of search results linking to a positive article about a young artist. Roy Greenslade, in the Guardian, writes

The Worcester News has been the victim of one of the more bizarre examples of the European court’s so-called “right to be forgotten” ruling.

The paper was told by Google that it was removing from its search archive an article in praise of a young artist.

Yes, you read that correctly. A positive story published five years ago about Dan Roach, who was then on the verge of gaining a degree in fine art, had to be taken down.

Although no one knows who made the request to Google, it is presumed to be the artist himself, as he had previously asked the paper itself to remove the piece,  on the basis that he felt it didn’t reflect the work he is producing now. But there is a bigger story here, and in my opinion it’s one of Google selling itself as an unwilling censor, and of media uncritically buying it.

Firstly, Google had no obligation to remove the results. The judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the Google Spain case was controversial, and problematic, but its effect was certainly not to oblige a search engine to respond to a takedown request without considering whether it has a legal obligation to do so. What it did say was that, although as a rule data subjects’ rights to removal override the interest of the general public having access to the information delivered by a search query, there may be particular reasons why the balance might go the other way.

Furthermore, even if the artist here had a legitimate complaint that the results constituted his personal data, and that the continued processing by Google was inadequate, inaccurate, excessive or continuing for longer than was necessary (none of which, I would submit, would actually be likely to apply in this case), Google could simply refuse to comply with the takedown request. At that point, the requester would be left with two options: sue, or complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The former option is an interesting one (and I wonder if any such small claims cases will be brought in the County Court) but I think in the majority of cases people will be likely to take the latter. However, if the ICO receives a complaint, it appears that the first thing it is likely to do is refer the person to the publisher of the information in question. In a blog post in August the Deputy Commissioner David Smith said

We’re about to update our website* with advice on when an individual should complain to us, what they need to tell us and how, in some cases, they might be better off pursuing their complaint with the original publisher and not just the search engine [emphasis added]

This is in line with their new approach to handling complaints by data subjects – which is effectively telling them to go off and resolve it with the data controller in the first place.

Even if the complaint does make its way to an ICO case officer, what that officer will be doing is assessing – pursuant to section 42 of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) – “whether it is likely or unlikely that the processing has been or is being carried out in compliance with the provisions of [the DPA]”. What the ICO is not doing is determining an appeal. An assessment of “compliance not likely” is no more than that – it does not oblige the data controller to take action (although it may be accompanied by recommendations). An assessment of “compliance likely”, moreover, leaves an aggrieved data subject with no other option but to attempt to sue the data controller. Contrary to what Information Commissioner Christopher Graham said at the recent Rewriting History debate, there is no right of appeal to the Information Tribunal in these circumstances.

Of course the ICO could, in addition to making a “compliance not likely” assessment, serve Google with an enforcement notice under section 42 DPA requiring them to remove the results. An enforcement notice does have proper legal force, and it is a criminal offence not comply with one. But they are rare creatures. If the ICO does ever serve one on Google things will get interesting, but let’s not hold our breath.

So, simply refusing to take down the results would, certainly in the short term, cause Google no trouble, nor attract any sanction.

Secondly (sorry, that was a long “firstly”) Google appear to have notified the paper of the takedown, in the same way they notified various journalists of takedowns of their pieces back in June this year (with, again, the predictable result that the journalists were outraged, and republicised the apparently taken down information). The ICO has identified that this practice by Google may in itself constitute unfair and unlawful processing: David Smith says

We can certainly see an argument for informing publishers that a link to their content has been taken down. However, in some cases, informing the publisher has led to the complained about information being republished, while in other cases results that are taken down will link to content that is far from legitimate – for example to hate sites of various sorts. In cases like that we can see why informing the content publisher could exacerbate an already difficult situation and could in itself have a very detrimental effect on the complainant’s privacy

Google is a huge and hugely rich organisation. It appears to be trying to chip away at the CJEU judgment by making it look ridiculous. And in doing so it is cleverly using the media to help portray it as a passive actor – victim, along with the media, of censorship. As I’ve written previously, Google is anything but passive – it has algorithms which prioritise certain results above others, for commercial reasons, and it will readily remove search results upon receipt of claims that the links are to copyright material. Those elements of the media who are expressing outrage at the spurious removal of links might take a moment to reflect whether Google is really as interested in freedom of expression as they are, and, if not, why it is acting as it is.

 

 
*At the time of writing this advice does not appear to have been made available on the ICO website.

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September 9, 2014 · 5:19 pm

You can’t take it with you

A paralegal has been convicted for taking client data with him when he left his role. Douglas Carswell MP denies taking Tory Party data, but what of his civil obligations with the data he has retained?

I blogged recently about the data protection implications of the news that Douglas Carswell MP was resigning his seat and seeking re-election as a UKIP MP. I mused on the fact that UKIP were reported to be “purring” over the data he was bringing with him, and I questioned whether, if this was personal data of constituents, his processing was compliant with his obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998. Paul Bernal blogged as well, and Paul was quoted in a subsequent article in The Times (which now seems to have been moved, or removed), in which Carswell defended himself against allegations of illegality

“Any data that the Conservative Party gathered while I was a member of the Conservative party is, was and must remain the property of the Conservative party.” He said that the suggestion that he had taken such information was “desperate briefing from within the Tory machine” and was extremely regrettable. The former MP did say, however, that he planned to use his own private data gathered during nine years as a Conservative MP. He insisted that he would not be sharing this with UKIP

With respect to Mr Carswell, this still doesn’t convince me that no data protection concerns exist. If by his “own private data”, he means information about constituents which is their personal data, then I would still argue that such use could potentially be in contravention of his civil obligations under the first and second principles in Schedule One to the Data Protection Act 1998. As I said previously

If constituents have given Carswell their details on the basis that it would be processed as part of his constituency work as a Conservative MP they might rightly be aggrieved if that personal data were then used by him in pursuit of his campaign as a UKIP candidate

Even if he didn’t share such data with UKIP, data protection obligations would clearly be engaged.

It seems to me that his quote to The Times was perhaps to refute any possible allegations that his use of data was criminal. A recent prosecution by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) illustrates how taking personal data from one job, or one role, to another, without the consent of the data controller, can be a criminal offence. The offender was a paralegal at a Yorkshire solicitor’s practice who, before he left the firm, emailed himself (presumably to a private address) information, in the form of workload lists, file notes and template documents. However, the information also contained the personal data of over 100 clients of the firm. Accordingly, he was convicted of the offence at section 55 of the DPA, of (in terms) unlawfully obtaining personal data without the consent of the data controller. The fine was, as they tend to be for section 55 offences, small – £300, plus a £30 victim surcharge and £438.63 prosecution costs – but the offender’s future job prospects in the legal sector might be adversely affected.

The ICO’s Head of Enforcement Steve Eckersley is quoted, and though he talks in terms of “employees”, his words might well be equally applicable to people leaving elected posts

Employees may think work related documents that they have produced or worked on belong to them and so they are entitled to take them when they leave. But if they include people’s details, then taking them without permission is breaking the law

Mr Carswell was wise not to retain data for which the Conservative Party was data controller. But I’m still not sure about the (non-criminal) implications of his use of data for which he is data controller.

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September 7, 2014 · 5:01 pm

Helping the ICO (but will ICO accept the help?)

I think the ICO should consider operating a priority alert system when well-informed third-parties alert them to exposures of personal data. They certainly shouldn’t leave those third parties to do in-depth investigation.

My attention was recently drawn to the existence of sensitive personal data being made available online. Google’s bots are brute things, and will effectively cache anything they can, such as data exposed by an unsecured ftp server, and that is what appears to have happened in this case. I looked at the names of the files and folders exposed, and I felt very uncomfortable. I don’t want to see this information, and the people involved certainly wouldn’t want me to. Furthermore, neither would the data controller – a voluntary service organisation. And section 55 of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) creates, in terms, an offence of obtaining personal data knowingly, without the consent of the data controller. Admittedly, if one does so and it is justified as in the public interest, then the elements of the offence are not made out, but my feeling was very much that, having seen very briefly the extent of the inadvertent exposure, I should go so far, and no further.

But what to do then? The short answer, is, to alert the data controller and refer the matter to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO’s duties are to regulate and enforce the DPA, and promote the following of good practice by data controllers. Although their website is predicated on the basis that a person reporting a concern will have a direct interest in the situation, it is still possible to report a third party concern. However, when I recently reported the fact that a local authority was exposing huge amounts of personal data as open data, firstly, the case officer could not understand why the data in question allowed individuals to be identified, and secondly, asked me to explain why, by providing screenshots. (I should add that I never received a reply from the local authority.) And I know of two other people who have been asked by the ICO to provide specific and detailed examples, such as screenshots, of exposed personal data. The problem with this is that it is dragging concerned third parties directly into potential illegality: taking and emailing screenshots of personal data is processing, without the consent of the data controller, and will (or should) involve encryption (although the ICO doesn’t appear to offer this to third parties) and issues about retention. I’m not suggesting that people will be prosecuted for doing a beneficial civic act, but it is far from ideal.

As always, I understand and accept that the ICO is woefully underfunded. They can only afford to pay new case officers about £4.5k above the annual minimum wage, but I do think they should have a system in place for people to report serious exposures of personal data, and for these reports to be treated and investigated with some urgency. In my recent “open data” case, I didn’t receive any acknowledgment of receipt of my concerns (other than an automated one indicating my email had been received) and the case officer, when I did get a reply, rather impatiently explained that their service standards mean “that if you have reported a concern to us you can expect to receive a response within 30 days”. But I noted that the MS Word doc. that was sent to me was called “ICO to DS raising concerns”. I presume “DS” means “data subject”, but, of course, that is not what I was in this case. A data subject raising concerns is, in the vast majority of cases, not going to be reporting the public exposure of large amounts of sensitive personal data (most often they will be complaining about a discrete incident involving their own data).

I have spoken to people who have reported what were quite clearly horrendous exposures of personal data, but by the time the ICO looked at the case the problem had either been rectified by the data controller, or, for instance, the Google cache links had expired. Of course, that is good on one view, but when it comes to the ICO’s regulatory role, it effectively means that delays in considering these reports allow evidence of serious contraventions by data controllers to be erased.

Almost a year ago I was alerted to a horrendous exposure of highly sensitive personal data (I understand that, again, an unsecured ftp server was to blame). And I remember the frustration and consternation that I and others felt at the apparent delay by Newcastle Citizen’s Advice Bureau in getting the data removed from the web. I’m rather amazed we never heard anything from the ICO about that incident – did they complete their investigation? did they take action? if not, how on earth did the CAB manage to persuade them there wasn’t a serious DPA contravention warranting enforcement action? And, as far as I know, the CAB branch never acknowledged what had happened, nor apologised for it, nor thanked those who had alerted them to the situation.

There are many expert and well-informed people who are prepared to alert data controllers and the ICO to potentially harmful exposures of personal data. Could there not be some sort of priority alert system? (If necessary, it could be through some sort of “trusted third-party” list.) If data controllers, but particularly if the ICO, are not willing to embrace the sort of public-spiritedness which identifies and alerts them to exposures of personal data, then it’s a poor lookout for data subjects.

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September 7, 2014 · 12:04 pm

Blackpool Displeasure Breach

I like watching football, but any real interest I had in following a club waned around the time David Hirst stopped scoring for fun for Sheffield Wednesday. I also came to be disillusioned by the advent of big money, with clubs run more and more as business concerns aimed at boosting the investments of shareholders.

So I hadn’t appreciated that convicted rapist Owen Oyston was still listed as Director of Blackpool F.C. Nor that his son Karl Oyston is Chairman. Nor that Karl’s son Sam runs the club’s hotel. It appears that at least some fans are highly critical of the Oyston dynasty, and this manifested itself in a rather puerile twitter exchange which was drawn to my attention this morning

Bw61QjoCAAEWYxL

To explain what’s going on here, a fan replies to a news item about the club’s manager, and calls the Oyston family “wankers”. Sam Oyston responds by identifying the seat the fan – presumably a season-ticket holder – occupies, and implies that if he continues to be rude the ticket will be withdrawn.

This is all very unsavoury, but it also raises concerns about the club’s handling of its fans’ personal data. The publishing of the seat number is not particularly worrying in itself: it refers to the fan’s physical place in a very public arena, and I doubt he would be bothered about it being publicised (he might even be proud, as it implies he is a dedicated fan). However, one must ask how, and why, the manager of a hotel run by the club has such ready access to customer details.

The first data protection principle of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) requires that personal data be processed fairly (and lawfully) and the second principle requires that personal data “shall be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes”. If fans’ details are being accessed by the club’s hotel manager, in order to implicitly threaten them with removal of their right to attend matches, it would be difficult to see how this would be compatible with purposes for which they were obtained by the club, as data controller. I suppose it is just possible that the terms of the tickets explain that, say, abusive behaviour could lead to cancellation, but even so, it would be unlikely that this would cover what happened in the twitter exchange. One might also question whether, if someone apparently unconnected with the running of the club membership can access ticket data, the club has – in accordance with the seventh data protection principle – appropriate organisational measures in place to safeguard against unauthorised processing of personal data.

A data controller has a statutory obligation to comply with the data protection principles – a failure to do so opens it up to the possibility of civil claims being made against it, and civil enforcement action being taken by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

The views in this post (and indeed all 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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August 31, 2014 · 10:03 am

Data protection implications of MPs crossing the floor

Douglas Carswell MP is a data controller.

It says so on the Information Commissioner’s register:

carswell

(I hope he remembers to renew the registration when it expires next week  it’s a criminal offence to process personal data as a data controller without a registration, unless you have an exemption).

But, more directly, he is a data controller because as an MP he is a person who determines the purposes for which and the manner in which the personal data of his constituents is processed.  Sensible guidance for MPs is provided by Parliament itself

A Member is the data controller for all personal data that is handled by their office and they have overall responsibility for ensuring that this is done in accordance with the DPA.

I have already written recently raising some concerns about Carswell’s alleged handling of constituents’ personal data. But this week he decided to leave the Conservative Party, resign his seat, and seek re-election as a member of the UKIP party. James Forsyth, in the Daily Mail, talks about the constituency knowledge Carswell will bring to UKIP, and reports that “one senior Ukip figure purrs: ‘The quality of Douglas’s data is amazing'”.

As a data controller an MP must process constituents’ personal data in accordance with the eight data protection principles of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). Failure to do so is a contravention of the data controller’s obligation under section 4(4). Data subjects can bring legal claims for compensation for contravention of that obligation, and for serious contraventions the ICO can take enforcement action, including the serving of monetary penalty notices to a maximum of £500,000.

The second data protection principle requires that

Personal data shall be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes

A person’s political opinions are “sensitive personal data”, afforded even greater protection under the DPA. It is not difficult to understand the historical basis for this, nor, indeed, the current basis for its still being so. Data protection law is in part an expression of and development of rights which were recognised by the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and European Convention on Human Rights. Oppression of people on the basis of their politics was and remains distressingly common.

If constituents have given Carswell their details on the basis that it would be processed as part of his constituency work as a Conservative MP they might rightly be aggrieved if that personal data were then used by him in pursuit of his campaign as a UKIP candidate. As Paul Bernal tweeted

If I gave my data to help the Tories and found it was being used to help UKIP I’d be livid
Such use would also potentially be in breach of the first data protection principle, which requires that personal data be processed fairly and lawfully. It would not be fair to share data with a political party or for the purposes of furthering its aim in circumstances where the data subject was not aware of this, and might very reasonably object. And it would not be lawful if the data were, for instance, disclosed to UKIP in breach of confidence.

An interesting twitter discussion took place this morning about whether this apparent use of constituents’ data might even engage the criminal law provisions of the DPA. As well as Carswell, there may be other data controllers involved: if some of the data he was in possession of was for instance, being processed by him on behalf of, say, the Conservative Party itself, then the latter would be data controller. Section 55 of the DPA creates, in terms, an offence of unlawfully disclosing personal data without the consent of the data controller. However, as was agreed on twitter, this would be a complex knot to unpick, and it is unlikely, to say the least, that either the ICO or the CPS would want to pursue the matter.
Notwithstanding this, there are serious questions to be asked about the DPA implications of any MP crossing the floor. The use of personal data is likely to be a key battleground in the forthcoming general election, and throw even sharper focus on European data protection reform. I would argue that this is a subject which the ICO needs to get a grip on, and quickly.

 

UPDATE: Paul Bernal has written a superb piece on the broader ethical issues engaged here.

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