I may be missing a point here, but the ICO has more than just court
proceedings to deal with breaches of the DPA, so the number of
successful court cases is not a good measure of how "good" the law is.
Warning letters usually seem to do the trick (except with the solicitor
mentioned earlier, of course). And I would say that whetehr a law is
"good" or not depends on how many people follow it, and given the large
number of companies, small and multinational, who come to us for data
protection advice and audits, I'd say it's taken fairly seriously.
-----Original Message-----
From: This list is for those interested in Data Protection issues
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of [log in to unmask]
Sent: 21 March 2005 18:22
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [data-protection] Bad Law? (was Interview notes)
Interesting discussion. My own view is that a bad law is one that is
perceived to be so. If the law appears to be enforced in such a way
that easy targets are the only ones attacked, then it appears the real
criminals will always get away and will laugh at the authorities. If it
appeared that the only people prosecuted for speeding or sexual offences
were those who could not afford a decent lawyer then it would indeed be
a indicator towards it being bad law.
If the only offences prosecuted were the strict liability offences of a
relatively minor nature - and the offences that had the potential to
harm people were dropped - then it would appear to be a bad law or at
least a bad enforcement policy.
In truth both sides of this argument may be right. Maybe the ICO is
only prosecuting those people who ignore his warnings or perhaps he is
only pursuing those where he knows he will succeed. Both the
illustrative cases in this thread will support both arguments - maybe we
should just ask the ICO what his prosecution policy really is.
I suspect his policy is related to his workload. (Oh you cynic!) ;-)
Ian B
Ian Buckland
Managing Director
Keep IT Legal Ltd
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