Thus said Hotspur (Henry Percy) as he faced up to Henry IV before the battle of Shrewsbury in July 1403 as William Shakespeare would have you believe. His rebellion was doomed to failure and the Bolingbroke line continued through the Battle of Agincourt and onwards; alas for Henry Percy, he was about to meet his maker.
It feels like doomsday is almost upon us again judging by the number of panic laden e-mails I am receiving about the impending doom of General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). The sword of Damocles hovers over us and that wicked ICO is about to wreak havoc as the dreaded GDPR become reality and invade our space. Who can save us from this mortal danger? Only the gallant army of experts who are ready to rescue us if only we could afford their generous fees.
For heaven’s sake we have had a Data Protection Act since 1998 which laid down the framework for protecting our personal information and for what businesses could and could not do. The solicitors profession has had a duty to look after the best interests of each client and keep their affairs confidential since Victorian times. I’m up for quotations today and as the writer of Ecclesiastes says “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” Keeping confidential things told to you in confidence is as old as the hills.
Quite frankly I am rather glad that the law is being tightened up. I am fed up of nuisance phone calls arising out of a minor motor accident in 2014 when no one was injured and little harm was done. Why am I not making a claim for the injuries suffered? How is it that the caller knows a certain insurance company has made a provision for a claim that I might make and the money is there for the taking? Of course to do so I will have to be prepared to collude with them in a fraud: and how does anyone know about these circumstances? Only because someone has sold my personal information and that someone is likely to be my own insurance company.
If I did consent for my data to be used for marketing purposes, I certainly did not knowingly and positively consent. Either my data has been misused or I gave some kind of consent on page 5 of their detailed terms of business. GDPR will require positive consent before my data can used for purposes other than that for which I made it available and I will make sure that such consent is not given lightly. The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica debacle shows that data supplied for one purpose has been easily used by those wishing to subvert the democratic process as well as targeted marketing. Mr Zuckerberg has apologised and promised change.
As a lawyer, safeguarding our clients’ personal data is a top priority, but it always has been. In some ways, the move from paper to electronic has made life easier. There is no more insecure means of keeping data than the printed word. Paper is left lying on desks, can be dropped in the street or lost if we mislay our briefcase. Electronic data secured by password and potentially encrypted is safer but the danger of hacking in and stealing data is a big risk for us all. All our staff need to be trained on the proper use of passwords and the safe use of mobiles and laptops.
GDPR is coming and we have all had to think about the extra rights data owners will have to access their data, make sure it is correct and sometimes insist that it is deleted from our filing systems altogether. On the other hand I for one will be happy when I know that the wings of those appalling marketers are at last clipped and the Knights on white chargers from the ICO can at last gain the upper hand in the information battles ahead.