Bifurcation

The Guardian has a long piece on the Tories 2015 election campaign and explains why some of the constituency campaigns have been investigated by the the Police. It hinges on the allocation of cost to the low limit constituency campaigns and the higher limit national campaigns. The Electoral Commission has investigated the battle bus costs and stated that,

“has found no evidence to suggest that the party had funded the BattleBus2015 campaign with the intention that it would promote or procure the electoral success of candidates”

apart from the planned location of the whistle stops.

The Guardian also quotes the Electoral Commission as saying,

“coaches of activists were transported to marginal constituencies to campaign alongside or in close proximity to local campaigners, …..

“it is apparent that candidate campaigning did take place during the BattleBus2015 campaign

 …

Restrictions

Just looking at my notes from the BCS Legal Day and while some are still hanging on for Brexit saving them from the GDPR, which it won’t, it becomes necessary to understand the wiggle room left by the GDPR.

Firstly, there is the competency limitations of Union itself, it cannot legislate for national & public security nor for the criminal justice system, these exclusions are stated in Article 23 Restrictions and also include (or exclude if that’s how you see it), the management of professions and the pursuit of civil justice. The Restrictions clause does however require the member state to act proportionately and respect the Charter of Fundamental Rights. In addition, there is room for national, member state, variances on the protection of employee data and the definition of public sector, impacting the need for a DPO. …

Datenkraken

Stephen Bush examines Amber Rudd’s Marr interview, look at the obvious errors and then moves away from encryption, and onto censorship. He doesn’t talk about the means, but states that the strict definition & separation of liability between a carrier and publisher gives facebook, youtube and twitter the excuse to avoid taking responsibility for the fake news and hate speech that they propagate. Will Hutton’s article on the malign influence of the  the Datenkraken  on free speech and enlightenment values is another dimension of Bush’s critique; one that requires a longer reply. …

Blame

Tim explores the idiocy and ignorance of the Home Secretary who looks at whether further regulating  messaging software might be helpful in reducing incidents such as the recent deadly assaults in Westminster. She already has the powers to mandate back doors in messaging software and a large knife should already be hard to get. But I note that no-one is asking if the car manufacturer, Hyundai according to Tim,  could have done more. …

Remaining

The Police estimated that 100K people attended the “Unite for the EU” march on Saturday; we used to double the police numbers in order to gauge the true size of the demo. Actually it’s been hard to discover its size with some sources describing the attendance as in the 1000’s. The TUC’s “March for the Alternative” in 2011 is reported on wikipedia as being between 1/4 & 1/2 million, but 100,000 is big; obviously not as big as the 1m that marched against the Iraq war in 2003 and that changed little.

The BBC’s reporting of the march has been complained about; describing 100,000 as thousands would seem to be a deliberate attempt to downplay the demo and its politics, we’ll see what happens there.

I am sorry that I couldn’t be there. …

Fines, Enforcement and good faith

Fines, Enforcement and good faith

We then considered enforcement trends. The total number of fines is going up; the maximum under the DPA is £½ m, the maximum under the GDPR will be €20m or 4% of global turnover. Today the ICO can fine under two laws, the Data Protection Act and the Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulation (PECR),  which regulate Data Controllers and Processors and direct mailing houses respectively. The ICO have taken more interest in the DPA since they gained fining powers. This note looks at the record in court, the change in enforcement powers, and notes that the preponderance of fines have been levied due toinadequate technical protection. …