Information Commissioner Breaches Information Commission, Spills Info

GDPR, what's that?

Irony abounds as the I.C.O. (Information Commissioner’s Office), the organisation responsible both for Freedom of Information Act requests and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) leaks The Daily Beagle’s private information to a third party.

The Context

The Daily Beagle are in the process of trying to obtain respondent documents via FOIA from County Durham’s H.M. Coroner’s office (a body under the government bearing the official logo) with regards to the 8 sudden deaths that occurred in County Durham back on Christmas day.

I.C.O. at first tried to argue H.M. Coroner were not a public body, and ergo not able to respond to such a request, and ignored the complaint over H.M. Coroner’s non-response.

The Daily Beagle provided a rebuttal to this decision that the H.M. (standing for ‘Her Majesty's’ or ‘His Majesty's’ depending on which monarch is in power) Coroner were, in-fact, part of the government, and thus a public body per the definitions of Section 6(1)(a) and Section 6(1)(c) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and therefore required to respond to FOIA requests.

As their decision did not originally close the case, this should have prompted a response from I.C.O. They tried to stonewall this rebuttal for weeks, so The Daily Beagle filed an official complaint on the handling.

I.C.O. tried to stonewall this complaint as well. However The Daily Beagle called out the I.C.O. for trying to illegally ‘run the clock’ (time limit is 3 months from the date of the original FOIA, not from the point of the complaint; the original FOIA was in March):

I.C.O. were forced to respond acknowledging they were handling the complaint knowing the jig on their clock-running was up:

After dwelling on the complaint for an additional 8 days, I.C.O. finally responded to the complaint. The I.C.O. investigated itself and found itself innocent:

They changed their arguments, and claimed the H.M. Coroner has a magical exception to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 under Coroner’s Act 1998 and the Coroner’s Rules 1984, citing an irrelevant case (Digby-Cameron v Information Commissioner (EA/2008/0010, 16 October 2008)).

Digby-Cameron is a case on how a Council can hold copies of information from third parties which they not the responsible parties for (E.G. you cannot ask them to disclose someone else’s information).

In this case, the only similarity is the case mentions the word ‘Coroner’. Nothing else. The facts of the case do not apply in cases of direct FOIA requests, which in this case were filed directly to H.M. Coroner in County Durham.

To add insult to injury, and expressing the extreme laziness of the I.C.O. in “considering” this complaint, it is a copy-paste citation from the I.C.O.’s own website regarding ‘information held’, which infers I.C.O. did not consider The Daily Beagle’s arguments at all.

Proving how bad the response was, part of the decision contained this link on how to make a complaint to the Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman:

But the page is simply a 404 (not found), it doesn’t exist:

It feels very much that I.C.O. simply keyword searched their own site for the word ‘Coroner’, and copy-pasted the contents of the first case to appear, and pretended this backed up their claims without actually reading The Daily Beagle’s rebuttal in hopes of sounding legally competent.

The Daily Beagle Retorts

The Daily Beagle retorted that firstly, the case details are not relevant to the current case. The Daily Beagle’s FOIA applies directly to the H.M. Coroner, and not via a council or some other party.

Secondly, The Daily Beagle notes the I.C.O. have failed to provide the specific sections within those Acts which grants the H.M. Coroner an exception from responding to FOIA. The Daily Beagle remarks this is likely due to the fact no such exemption exists.

Thirdly, The Daily Beagle retorted that even if there was an exception — which the Daily Beagle doubts — it is superseded by the newer Freedom of Information Act 2000.

In Acts of Parliament, newer acts of Parliament supersede older ones. So the Freedom of Information Act 2000 — which grants no exceptions to H.M. Coroner — supersedes any protections offered by Coroner’s Act 1998 and the Coroner’s Rules 1984. It is two years newer.

Fourthly, The Daily Beagle retorted that if the I.C.O.’s argument was taken at face value, that historical exemptions override newer laws, it would violate the sovereignty of Parliament and their ability to make new laws and legislations, as it would mean older laws supersede newer ones, therefore invalidating Parliament’s decision making authority by preventing them passing new bills and legislation.

I.C.O. Leaks The Daily Beagle’s Private Information

The I.C.O., responsible for enforcing GDPR data breaches, ironically breached our privacy. It seems distinctly retaliatory, given the person they sent it to expressed anger at how the I.C.O. had mistreated them.

We were contacted by a third party who asked us if they had received a copy of their decision from the I.C.O., because they had received ours, including all personal information. They included a copy of the original document as evidence.

We asked them in what capacity did they work, to which they replied they were an ordinary member of the public; they had absolutely no relation to the case. The I.C.O. bundled off the copy-paste response to someone else and forgot to change the personal details, resulting in a GDPR breach.

We received the third party’s permission to refer their email on to the I.C.O. as evidence of a GDPR information breach — no doubt something the I.C.O. will attempt to ignore, and so far have.

We followed up with a request permission to publish an anonymised copy of the email on The Daily Beagle, as well as offering to provide their story of issues with the I.C.O. coverage on The Daily Beagle. At time of writing they did not respond.

Although The Daily Beagle is within reason to publish a copy of the email, unlike the I.C.O. we don’t publish members’ of the public’s information without an extremely good reason, and even if we did; we’d responsibly redact their personal information.

The Daily Beagle intends to wait to see what, if any, response from the I.C.O. is — most likely silence — before escalating to the Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman given the atrocious efforts by I.C.O.

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