“Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as Read more…
Earlier this year the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) decided the case of Google Spain v Costeja González, which established the so-called right to be forgotten (RTBF), which can be more accurately described as a data subject’s right to remove links to inaccurate and potentially harmful information from Read more…
Back when the Court of Justice of the European Union decided the case of Google Spain, one of my first comments was that we needed some time to have a look at the way the decision is going to be applied and implemented. It’s been just under 6 months since Read more…
Much has been written about the security and gender issues surrounding the leak of naked celebrity pictures taken from cloud services. Similarly, much has been said about the CJEU ruling on the so-called “right to be forgotten”. However, I am surprised that not many have made a connection between the Read more…
It would be an understatement to say that Google Glass is not getting the warmest reception. Restaurants, bars and cafes have banned Google Glass users. The UK Cinema Association has moved to ban Google Glass over piracy concerns. Casinos have joined the fray. And the term glasshole says it all, Read more…
Everyone has something to hide. It can be something innocuous, like a mild Farmville addiction, a guilty enjoyment of the directorial efforts of Michael Bay, or an embarrassing video singing “Let It Go” in the shower. Some things can be more serious, such as a sexting session that was made Read more…
Here is an interesting development in privacy law. The High Court of England and Wales has confirmed the existence of a new Tort, the tort of misuse of private information. In the case of Vidal-Hall & Ors v Google Inc [2014] EWHC 13 (QB), a group of users have sued Read more…
[Text of a presentation I gave before a screening of The Lives of Others at Wolfson College, Oxford]. Although I am nowadays more interested in IP issues, I started my academic life as a privacy lawyer. My first publications dealt with something called Habeas Data, an obscure constitutional right that Read more…
Imagine a world where there is a secret society with the capacity of listening into all sort of private communications all the time. This organisation has managed to build backdoors into hardware that allows them to check on sensitive data throughout the world seemingly at the click of a button. Read more…
So far, the most serious report to arise from the NSA files has been the revelation that US authorities have been involved in a systematic program to defeat Internet encryption. By any objective measure, the revelations are astounding: intelligence agencies have been building backdoors into cryptographic technology by tampering with Read more…