Category: Privacy

Full Breach Damages in data protection cases – the impact of Vidal-Hall on Collins v FBD

| 7 Comments
| Privacy

FDB (via Krishna De) & Data Subject (via Pixabay)The Court of Appeal decision in Google Inc v Vidal-Hall [2015] EWCA Civ 311 (27 March 2015) (Dyson MR and Sharp LJ in a joint judgment; McFarlane LJ concurring), affirming the judgment of Tugendhat J (at [2014] EWHC 13 (QB) (16 January 2014)), is a very important decision on damages for invasion of privacy, and it raises significant questions about the correctness of of Feeney J’s reasoning in the earlier Irish case of Collins v FBD Insurance plc [2013] IEHC 137 (14 March 2013).

The three claimants alleged that the defendant had tracked and collated private information about the their internet usage via their Apple Safari browser without their knowledge and consent, contrary to the defendant’s publicly stated position that such activity could not be conducted for Safari users unless they had expressly allowed it to happen (much of the technical and regulatory background is set out here by Alexander Hanff; and Judith Vidal-Hall explains here and here how she came to take on the giant that is Google). The Court held that the claimants could maintain claims against the defendant, in tort for misuse of private information, and for compensation pursuant section 13 of the Data Protection Act, 1998.…

Read More »

McKillen’s claims against the Barclay Brothers near their end

| No Comments
| Open Justice, Privacy

The Connaught Hotel, London, via WikipediaThe long-running saga in McKillen v Misland (Cyprus) Investments Ltd seems to be nearing its end. I have already discussed the stage of the case which concerned open justice, and the first instance judgment of Richards J on the substantive issue (see [2012] EWHC 2343 (Ch)). The aim of this post is to note both the final outcome of the substantive action and the ultimate resolution of the dispute in London (though an Irish offshoot may still be ongoing).

The plaintiff, the formerly reclusive but now well known Irish property developer, Mr Paddy McKillen, owned 36.2% of the shares in Coroin, which owned and managed three leading hotels in London – Claridge’s, the Connaught (pictured) and the Berkeley. Derek Quinlan owned 35.4% of the shares. In January 2011, a company associated with Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay bought Misland (Cyprus) Investments Limited, (Misland), which then owned 24.7% and ultimately owned 28.36% of the shares. During the remainder of 2011, the Barclays and associated companies sought to take control of Coroin. McKillen alleged that the steps they took amounted to a breach of pre-emption in provisions in a shareholders’ agreement which required shares to be offered to other shareholders before being sold elsewhere, and that the pre-emption provisions were also triggered by charges over Mr Quinlan’s shares to secure Mr Quinlan’s bank borrowings becoming enforceable.…

Read More »

Regulating Emerging Technologies: A Challenge for Law, a Challenge for Ethics, a Challenge for Everyone

| No Comments
| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, Privacy, Regulation

Brownsword at ADAPT
Professor Roger Brownsword will deliver a public lecture on

Regulating Emerging Technologies: A Challenge for Law, a Challenge for Ethics, a Challenge for Everyone

in the Trinity Long Room Hub, on Wednesday 11 March 2015 at 6:30pm.

In this public lecture, organised by the Confederal School of Religions, Peace Studies and Theology, the School of Law, and the Ethics and Privacy Working Group of the ADAPT centre, at Trinity College Dublin, Professor Brownsword will consider the regulation of emerging technologies. In particular, they are not easily regulated: getting the regulatory environment right is a considerable challenge. Legal frameworks tend to lose connection with their technological targets; even when connected, laws are often relatively ineffective; and ethicists are unable to agree on the interpretation and application of respect for human rights and human dignity as the measure of regulatory legitimacy. At the same time, new technologies insinuate themselves into the regulatory environment as tools that promise greater effectiveness. In a context of rapid technological change coupled with deep regulatory uncertainty, it will be suggested that the priorities are to safeguard the integrity of the infrastructure for human life, to preserve the conditions in which communities with moral aspirations may flourish, and to encourage broader and more inclusive debates about the social licence to be given to modern technologies.…

Read More »

Privacy Paradigm – Towards a Creative Commons for Privacy

| 2 Comments
| Copyright, Privacy

Privacy ParadigmI’ve recently given two presentations about the internet and privacy, the first a fortnight ago in UCD at the Student Legal Convention, and the second last week in WIT. My theme, both times, was the decline of privacy online, and what we can do about it, not only from regulation by Data Protection Commissioners to individual court cases, but also from protecting our own privacy to respecting the privacy of others. In the latter context, I called for a Creative Commons for Privacy and I suggested that it might be called Privacy Paradigm (but if you have a better idea, please let me know). In this post, I want to tease out what a Privacy Paradigm, a Creative Commons for Privacy, might look like and what it could do.

If the analogy is to Creative Commons, the first question must be: what does Creative Commons do? Have a look at the column on the right, and scroll down a bit to the box headed “Licence”. You’ll see a badge with three icons and some short-hand; and you’ll see accompanying text which explains that this blog is “licensed under a Creative Commons … License”. By these means, I signal not only that you may re-use my content, but also the conditions under which you may do so.…

Read More »

There’s an adjective for #Gryzzl on “Parks and Recreation” – it’s dysagurian

| 4 Comments
| Cinema, television and theatre, Dysaguria, Press Council, Privacy

Gryzzl HQThe mockumentary-style tv comedy series Parks and Recreation, according to Wikipedia, is “an American comedy on the NBC television network, starring Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope, a perky, mid-level bureaucrat in the parks department of Pawnee, a fictional town in Indiana”. According to IMDB, the series relates the “absurd antics of an Indiana town’s public officials as they pursue sundry projects to make their city a better place”. In Ireland, at least one season has been shown RTÉ Two; and in the UK, three seasons have been shown on BBC4. Alert: so, for Irish and UK readers of the blog who are fans of the show (and the Daily Edge recently gave 7 reasons why we should be), the remainder of this post is a great big spoiler.

At the end of series 6, Pawnee thinks they’ve struck gold when Gryzzl, an internet company marketing itself as “the cloud for your cloud”, sets up in town. But, in the farewell series 7, all is not well between Leslie and Gryzzl. …

Read More »

The privations of privacy: from dystopia to dysaguria

| 6 Comments
| Cyberlaw, Dysaguria, Privacy

Dave Eggers The Circle coverI spoke yesterday evening at a Data Protection Day event in Trinity College Dublin. The theme was “What does the Internet say about you?”. It was organized by the Information Compliance Office and the Science Gallery in Trinity. Jessica Kelly of Newstalk introduced and chaired the event. You can download audio of my talk here (via SoundCloud), and you can download slides for my talk here (via SlideShare).

I was full of my usual caffeine-deprived doom about the challenges which technology pose for privacy. Jeanne Kelly, a partner in Dublin solicitors firm of Mason Hayes & Curran, spoke about the still-pending EU Data Protection Regulation. Conor Flynn, principal of Information Security Assurance Services, spoke about our digital footprints. And Sinéad McSweeney, Director of Public Policy for Europe, the Middle East and Aisa, at Twitter, talked about Twitter’s foundational commitments to freedom of expression and individual privacy. The evening was recorded for podcast, and I’ll blog about those presentations when the podcast is available.

In this post, I want to mention one point which I made near the end of my talk. I coined a new word – the last word in the title to this blogpost.…

Read More »

What does the Internet say about you? Data Privacy Day event in TCD

| 1 Comment
| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, Privacy

dpdTo mark Data Protection Day on Wednesday 28 January 2015, the Information Compliance Office in Trinity College Dublin have teamed up with the Science Gallery to find out: What does the Internet say about you? They have organised a Panel Discussion hosted by Newstalk‘s Jessica Kelly, where Ireland’s leading voices on data protection will discuss

Online Privacy – What does the Internet say about you

It will be held on Wednesday 28 Jan 2015 at 6:00pm in the JM Synge Lecture Theatre, Room 2039, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin (map here). The speakers include:

Sinéad McSweeney, Director of Public Policy, Twitter;
Jeanne Kelly, Partner, Mason Hayes & Curran Solicitors;
Conor Flynn, ISAS Ltd; and
Eoin O’Dell, School of Law, Trinity College Dublin. My provisional working title is:

What the Internet knows about you, and do you have the right to make it forget?

The world wide web is now more than 25 years old; it is transforming how we live and how we think about ourselves and our identities; and the law is struggling to catch up. Vint Cerf, a pioneer of the internet and now Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, recently told a US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) hearing that “privacy may be an anomaly” (pdf) in the age of social media, and this poses profound challenges for our legal, philosophical and ethical conceptions of privacy.…

Read More »

The Ethics of Security and Surveillance Technologies

| No Comments
| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, Digital Rights, Privacy

987dcd49-c69f-48b5-a808-66e89bec0087
Professor Hille Haker will deliver a public lecture on

The Ethics of Security and Surveillance Technologies

in the Trinity Long Room Hub, on Thursday 22 January 2015, at 18:30. In this public lecture, organised by the Confederal School of Religions, Peace Studies and Theology at Trinity College Dublin, and the Ethics and Privacy Working Group of the ADAPT centre at TCD, Prof Haker will outline her thoughts on the ethics of surveillance technologies. In particular, she will address the key questions:

Security and freedom: do we need both?
And can we enjoy both without the pursuit of one jeopardising the other?

Prof Haker is a member of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE), which advises the European Commission on ethical issues. On 20 May 2014, the EGE submitted to the Commission their Opinion no 28 on “Ethics of Information and Communication Technologies”. In an era where rapid advances in telecommunications and computing have enabled the data of billions of citizens around the globe to be tracked and scrutinized on an unprecedented scale, the Opinion aims to provide a reference point for the Commission regarding the ethics of security and surveillance measures.

Building upon the Opinion, in this lecture, Prof Haker considers the tensions between security and freedom.…

Read More »

© cearta.ie 2025. Powered by WordPress