Some time ago I was going through my social media feeds when something caught my eye. A person I barely knew posted a selfie with himself and partner, both facing the camera and making a surprised face, with an older lady in the background fanning her face and clearly suffering […]
The death of privacy is a chronicle of a death foretold. One of my favourite cartoons is the 1970 Newsweek cover that depicts the end of privacy, to me it clearly portrays our fears about loss of control and technologies designed to keep track of our every move. Time Magazine […]
The European Commission has finally published the text of the programme called Privacy Shield, the name of the agreement reached with the United States to safeguard the export of personal data from European citizens across the Atlantic. This is in response to the CJEU case of Maximiliam Schrems v Data […]
As we reported last year, an English court recognised the existence of a tort of privacy (more accurately, the tort of misuse of private information) in the case of Vidal-Hall v Google. The case involved a group of Google users who sued the search engine alleging that it had misused […]
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 […]
Since September 11, 2001, whenever I was visiting or passing through the United States, I have been subjected to more “random” security checks than could ever be expected by chance alone. Similarly, I have come to expect to be stopped by the Immigration officers about 50% of the time. The […]
Do you remember the time when important events were described by journalists, re-enacted by actors, or retold by witnesses? Lucky snapshots were rare, and viral videos and citizen journalism were alien concepts. Now we are increasingly presented with pictures that give us every angle of an explosion, CCTV cameras catching […]
Privacy is dead. There is no such thing as privacy. We are all under constant, unending, crushing surveillance. Depressed? You should be. This is the powerful conclusion reached by security guru Bruce Schneier in this brilliant op-ed for CNN. Schneier writes: “The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit […]
The Internet is going through one of its cyclical soul-searching periods, prompted by a spat between popular websites Reddit and Gawker. A journalist for Gawker published an article in which the identity of a notorious troll on Reddit was doxxed, that is, his real identity was revealed. In real life, […]
I have been seeing different versions of the following legal-looking privacy statement on Facebook popping up through my timeline: “Facebook is now a publicly traded entity. Unless you state otherwise, anyone can infringe on your right to privacy once you post to this site. It is recommended that you and […]