Some Russian oligarchs are using U.K. data privacy law to sue
Source: Washington Post
Technology
Some Russian oligarchs are using U.K. data privacy law to sue
The law, intended to prevent ads from tracking consumers too closely around the Internet, is now being used to sue anyone holding undesirable information on their devices
By Reed Albergotti
Today at 10:38 a.m. EDT
Russian oligarchs and other powerful individuals are turning to an unusual method to protect their online images: data privacy laws. ... Those laws, which were intended to prevent ads from tracking consumers too closely around the Internet, are now being used in the United Kingdom to sue anyone holding undesirable information on their devices. That could include a journalist‘s notes from an interview typed into a computer or a private investigator’s compromising photos stored on a phone.
British law is already notoriously friendly to plaintiffs who want to stop the publication of an unflattering article or other information they allege is untrue under libel law. When suing using the U.K.’s data privacy law, which was modeled after the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation following Brexit and targeted at companies like Google, the legal reasoning is that the journalist or other target is a “data collector.”
The data privacy law covers a wide swath of real and truthful data that could be held on any device, not just things that could be libelous. Already, several high-profile cases have successfully tested the law’s potency against politicians and journalists, and parliamentarians have held hearings on the issue.
“The way the law is being used by oligarchs to silence journalists is expressly not what parliament’s intention was,” said Liam Byrne, a member of parliament. “It’s all part of trying to murder the truth.”
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By Reed Albergotti
Reed Albergotti is The Washington Post's consumer electronics reporter, taking readers inside powerful and secretive companies such as Apple and shedding light on the murky and global industry responsible for building the myriad devices that touch every aspect of our lives. He spent 12 years at the Wall Street Journal and four at the Information. Twitter https://twitter.com/reedalbergotti
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/31/oligarchs-data-privacy-law/
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Some Russian oligarchs are using U.K. data privacy law to sue
The U.K.’s data privacy laws, which were intended to prevent ads from tracking consumers too closely around the Internet, are now being used to sue anyone