Tag Archives: Facebook Ireland

Facebook challenging temporary stop processing order by Irish DPC

Earlier this week it was reported that the Irish Data Protection Commission had taken action to temporarily suspend data transfers from the EU to the US by Facebook. It has now been reported that Facebook is challenging that decision in the Irish Courts by way of judicial review proceedings.

Following the European Court of Justice invalidating the Privacy Shield agreement between the EU and the US, Facebook decided to switch its transfer mechanism to standard contractual clauses (SSCs). The judgment of the ECJ in Schrems II approved of the SSCs, but made it clear that simply relying upon SSCs was not enough. The effect of the Schrems II decision is that supervisory authorities are required to suspend or prohibit transfers of personal data transferred in reliance of standard contractual clauses where they are not being complied with or are incapable of being complied with.

There was always going to be some doubt about whether SSCs were an effective alternative to privacy shield because the same issues that resulted in the invalidation of privacy shield exist in relation to transfers to the US utilising SSCs The Irish DPC appears to have taken a preliminary view which cannot be a favourable one given the action it has taken.

Little is known at this stage about the basis of Facebook’s judicial review, more on this will likely come to light as matters progress before the courts in Ireland. This is a case that anyone involved in international transfers of personal data should keep an eye on; the Irish Courts may apply some gloss onto the additional layers that may need to be added to SSCs in order to make them effective in particular situations.

The ability to order a controller to stop processing personal data (in whole or in part) is probably the most overlooked of the powers that supervisory authorities have; the impact of such orders can be more immediate and painful to controllers than an administrative fine. If the preliminary decision by the Irish Data Protection Commission survives judicial review then the implications for Facebook (and other companies that rely significantly on international transfers of personal data to third countries) could be significant.

Alistair Sloan

If you would like advice or assistance in relation to a data protection matter, or any other information law matter, then contact our team on 0141 229 0880 or by E-mail.

Data Protection and Privacy Enforcement: October 2018

Regular readers of this blog will know that every month I look at the published enforcement action taken by the Information Commissioner in respect of privacy and data protection law. The infractions are often very similar and the same key lessons to take away from the enforcement action appear frequently; October’s enforcement action proves no different. There is, however, a mixture of enforcement action taken under the Data Protection Act 1998 (“DPA98) – in respect of breaches that occurred prior to the 25 May 2018 – and enforcement action taken under the Data Protection Act 2018 (”DPA18).

Key Lessons

  • When the Commissioner’s office makes contact with you in the course of an investigation it is advisable to cooperate with the investigation. The Commissioner has powers to require persons (not just data controllers) to provide her office with information. It is a criminal offence not to comply with an information notice issued by the Commissioner under the DPA98 while a person who fails to comply with an Information Notice served under the DPA18 can be made the subject of an Information Order by the court.
  • Before making telephone calls for the purpose of direct marketing it is essential that organisations check their list against the list held by the Telephone Preference Service. It is against the law to call a number listed with the TPS for the purposes of direct marketing unless you can show that the recipient has not objected, for the time being, to receiving marketing calls from you. The law has recently been changed and the Commissioner will soon be able to serve a monetary penalty on directors of a company for breaches of the requirements of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.
  • Any removable media such as CDs and USB memory sticks should be encrypted to prevent unauthorised access to personal data in the event that the media is lost or stolen. Controllers should also consider putting in place technical barriers to ensure that personal data is not unnecessarily being put onto removable media.
  • When drafting privacy statements where you are seeking to obtain consent for direct marketing; it is important to be specific about just what marketing might be sent. It is insufficient to rely upon statements along the lines of “you consent to receive marketing from our carefully selected third party affiliates” and similar.
  • The person who instigates a call is liable for a contravention of PECR, not the person who makes the call. Therefore you cannot avoid liability by engaging a third party contractor to make calls on your behalf. If you have directed that the calls be made then you are liable for any contraventions of PECR. Therefore, companies who engage third parties to undertake telemarketing on their behalf need to ensure that they have in place adequate due diligence to ensure that there are no negligent contraventions of PECR.
  • It’s not enough to simply rely upon your own internal suppression lists when making telephone calls for the purposes of direct marketing; it is also important that call lists as screened against the list maintained by the Telephone Preference Service. It’s also important that companies engaging in telesales regularly obtain an updated version of the list maintained by the TPS and you should never seek to rely upon a version of the list that is more than 28 days old.
  • It can be worthwhile brining appeals against Notices served by the Commissioner – especially where the terms of the notice are unclear. Where reasons are provided for a decision they generally require to be intelligible.

Enforcement action published by the Information Commissioner in October 2018

Oaklands Assist UK Limited
Oaklands Assist UK Limited (“OAUK”) was served with a Monetary Penalty Notice  in the sum of £150,000 [pdf] after the Commissioner found that OAUK had used a public electronic communications service for the purpose of direct marketing in contravention of Regulation 21 of the Privacy and electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (“PECR”). It appears that OAUK did not initially comply with the Commissioner’s investigation as the penalty notice states that the Commissioner had to serve an Information Notice on OAUK and it only made contact with the Commissioner’s office when they were threated with prosecution for failure to comply with an Information Notice. The Commissioner found that OAUK had made 63,724 direct marketing calls to numbers that were listed on the TPS, in contravention of Regulation 21 of PECR.

Heathrow Airport Limited
Heathrow Airport Limited (“LHR”) was served with a monetary penalty notice in the sum of £120,000 [pdf] after the Commissioner found that it had breached the seventh data protection principle in schedule 1 to the DPA98. LHR had lost an unencrypted USB memory stick which had been found by a member of the public in West London. The member of the public who found the USB memory stick took it to a public library where they accessed it. Approximately 1% of the files on the memory stick contained personal data, including sensitive personal data. The Commissioner found that the use of removable media was widespread within LHR, but that there was little in the way of measures in places to ensure oversight. Furthermore, there were no technical barriers in place to limit or restrict the downloading of information from LHR’s systems onto removable media.

Boost Finance Limited
Boost Finance Limited (“Boost”) was served with a monetary penalty notice in the sum of £90,000 [pdf] after the Commissioner found that it was responsible for a large number of unsolicited E-mails in respect of pre-paid funeral plans. The Commissioner found that Boost (trading as findmeafuneralplan.com) had instigated, via affiliates that it had appointed, in excess of 4 million unsolicited marketing E-mails contrary to Regulation 22 of PECR. The E-mails were sent to individuals who had subscribed to a number of Boost’s affiliates. The Commissioner concluded [para 16] that Boost had “relied upon inadequate, generic, vague, misleading, tiered and incomplete personal data collection methods and privacy statements as a way of obtaining consent to send direct marketing E-mails.”

Aggregate IQ Data Services Limited
This is not a new Enforcement Notice, but rather it is a notice of variation of the first ever enforcement notice served under the DPA18 [pdf]. Aggregate IQ Data Services Limited (“AIQ”) was served with an enforcement notice by the Commissioner in respect of her investigation into data analytics in politics (which arose out of the allegations surrounding Facebook and Cambridge Analytica). AIQ had appealed the Notice to the First-Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) and has since discontinued that appeal. The revised notice is in much tighter terms than the original notice served by the Commissioner. The revised notice requires AIQ to “[e]rase any personal data of individuals in the UK, determined by reference to the domain name of the email address processed by AIQ, retained by AIQ on its servers as notified to the Information Commissioner…” AIQ is required to do this within 30 days of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia notifying it that either the OIPC no longer requires it for an investigation, or that the OIPC informs AIQ that it is happy for AIQ to comply with the notice (whichever occurs the soonest).

Facebook Ireland Ltd
Facebook Ireland Ltd is the company who UK users (and indeed other EU users) of the Facebook social media platform have a relationship with. The Commissioner served Facebook Ireland with a monetary penalty notice in the sum of £500,000 for breaches of the first and seventh data protection principles [pdf]. The Commissioner considered that Facebook UK Limited, a UK establishment, had carried out certain activities on behalf of Facebook Ireland and Facebook Inc. As the breaches occurred while the DPA98 was still in force, £500,000 represents the maximum penalty that the Commissioner could issue. It is understood that Facebook Ireland has appealed the monetary penalty to the First-Tier Tribunal (Information Rights).

ACT Response Limited
The Information Commissioner served ACT Response Limited (“ACT”) with a monetary penalty notice in the amount of £140,000 [pdf] after she found that ACT had instigated in excess of £490,000 telephone calls for the purposes of direct marketing in contravention of Regulation 21 of PECR. The company operated its own internal suppression list, but did not screen its lists against the Telephone Preference Service list. ACT provided a copy of a training manual to the commissioner during her investigation, which contained a script which directed those making the calls to ask whether a person was listed on the TPS and to apologise if they were. ACT tried to blame the contravention on one of its sister companies as the company that made the calls, but the sister company made the calls on behalf of ACT and the lines used to make the calls were registered to ACT.

Alistair Sloan

If you require advice and assistance in connection with any of the data protection/privacy issues above, or any other Information Law matter, please do contact Alistair Sloan on 0141 229 0880 or by sending him an E-mail directly.  You can also follow our dedicated information law twitter account.