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Analysis and Commentary about Global Data Protection Laws, Including GDPR, FOI, Cyber Security and Surveillance
By Neil Murphy Pupils in England return to school today. Secondary schools have been given the additional task of facilitating on-site covid tests. Not only do they need to be trained, ready to supervise this testing, they also need to be up to speed with their data protection responsibilities as set out in the new UK GDPR. Many … Continue reading “Covid Testing in Schools and Data Protection”
Emma Garland writes… Many countries have now been in some form of lockdown for a considerable length of time. As some of the lockdown measures are slowly being eased, one of the possible solutions to prevent a “second wave” is the implementation of temperature checks in shops and workplaces. This involves placing a thermometer on … Continue reading “Covid-19, GDPR and Temperature Checks”
The first three blog posts in this series have raised many issues about the proposed NHS COVID19 Contact Tracing App (COVID App) including the incomplete DPIA and lack of human rights compliance. In this final post we discuss concerns about how long the data collected by the app will be held and what it will … Continue reading “The NHS COVID 19 Contact Tracing App: Part 4 Questions about Data Retention and Function Creep”
Everyone will agree that the government needs to do everything it can to prevent the further spread of the Coronavirus and to “save lives” (except if your name is Dominic Cummings -Ed). However, there is much less consensus about the what it should do, and this can be seen in the current debate about the … Continue reading “The NHS COVID 19 Contact Tracing App: Part 3 The Human Rights Angle”
Yesterday the Prime Minister said England will have a “world-beating” Covid 19 contact tracing system from June. Part of this system is the introduction of the NHS contact tracing app (“the Covid App”) which is currently being trialled on the Isle of Wight. The app was initially meant to be launched across England in mid-May. Yesterday … Continue reading “The NHS COVID 19 Contact Tracing App Part 2: The Data Protection Impact Assessment”
This is the first in a series of four blog posts, in which Susan Wolf and Lynn Wyeth, take a closer look at the government’s proposed NHS COVID 19 contact tracing app (COVID App) from different perspectives. On 12 April 2020, the UK Government announced that NHSX, a unit of the NHS responsible for digital innovation, was developing a COVID 19 contact tracing app to help in its … Continue reading “The NHS COVID 19 Contact Tracing App: Part 1”
In a concerning revelation of data security lapses, NHS Fife has been formally reprimanded by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) following an incident where an unauthorised individual accessed sensitive patient information. The breach occurred in a hospital ward and highlights key learnings for all organisations regarding security protocols for personal data. Incident Overview The case … Continue reading “ICO Reprimand for NHS Patient Data Breach”
Yesterday the Financial Times reported that, “nine schools in North Ayrshire will start taking payments for school lunches by scanning the faces of pupils, claiming that the new system speeds up queues and is more Covid-secure than the card payments and fingerprint scanners they used previously.” For a few years now, schools have used biometrics including automated … Continue reading “Facial Recognition in Schools: Please, sir, I want some more.”
The sharing of personal data between organisations has many public and business benefits. However there is much confusion about what the law allows, particularly the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In December, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) finally published its Data Sharing Code of Practice following a consultation exercise. The code does not impose any additional barriers … Continue reading “The New ICO Data Sharing Code of Practice”
Act Now is pleased to announce its support for Woodgate Community Food which is a food bank for residents of the Fosse Ward in Leicester. It recently won the Leicestershire Community Champions Award (Community Organisation category). According to a report in the Guardian recently, food aid charities have identified the emergence of the UK’s “newly hungry”, a growing cohort of … Continue reading “Act Now Supports Leicester Food Bank”
