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The surprising reason given for the change to HSE policy on providing patient...
This morning’s Irish Times reports on a change to a Health Service Executive policy I never knew existed. Until now, Irish hospitals provided members of the clergy with access to patient admission...
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Do you own your wedding album?
You might think this a silly question. Of course you own your cherished wedding or civil partnership ceremony photographs. But how far does that ownership extend? Do you have the right to make copies...
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Election 2011: Privacy, intellectual property & the internet
With so much of the electoral attention focussed on crisis management, it is easy to ignore other aspects of each party’s manifestos (or the absence of same in the case of many independents). It is...
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Privacy and the press
I wrote a short article for last week’s Sunday Business Post on the super-injunctions story and the conflict between freedom of speech and privacy. It appeared in the Computers and Business magazine...
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Department of Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation (brief) consultation on...
[Updated 23/06/11] In the (literally) last days of the previous Government, a rumour shot around that the then Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation was about to sign a statutory instrument...
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New data protection rules on cookies & mandatory data breach reporting for...
Not those kind of cookies. Last week, the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources signed a group of statutory instruments into law which transpose the EU telecommunications reform...
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Battle of the Bakers: Round 2 (and an interesting update re Round 1)
Exhibit A: McCambridge bread I had assumed that the McCambridge v. Brennan brown bread case was solely one of intellectual property infringement but the judgment of Mr Justice Peart, which has now been...
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The strange, hypocritical attitude of the Irish Government to copyright, the...
[Updated, at end] The introduction yesterday of an amendment to the Copyright & Related Rights Acts has been in the works for a long time (posts here, here and here). The issue has generated quite...
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Yet another Toyota recall
I wrote twice before on product recalls by Toyota and the apparent legislative oversight which meant that there was no legal provision allowing Toyota to obtain records of Toyota owners from the...
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Instagate
Instagram has courted controversy this week by announcing changes to its terms and conditions. There are clauses in Instagram’s new terms which are likely to cause them difficulty with privacy and...
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The Circle (a rare book review)
Sam Seaborn (or Aaron Sorkin) said it in 1999: “The next 20 years will be about privacy.” So it’s not surprising that serious authors will tackle the issue, as Dave Eggers has now done in The Circle....
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Be kind, rewind: the dangers of covert CCTV
Cameras are everywhere these days, but CCTV systems have been popular since well before the advent of camera phones. For the most part CCTV cameras are positioned in fixed, known locations such as...
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Employers can’t spy on employees
Court judgments, often complex and difficult to translate into a soundbite (or, these days, clickbait), are frequently misreported. This is particularly the case with European court judgments, whether...
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Litigation disclosure of personal data
Photo © Convert GDPR https://www.convert.com/GDPR/ Litigation solicitors often request and disclose too much information about clients when representing them in court cases. The imminent data...
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Community surveillance & Limerick’s Smart CCTV scheme
A Smart CCTV installation in The Square, Newcastle West I have had a draft blog post lingering for many months addressing some of the issues and concerns with community surveillance, particularly in...
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Lights, camera, action?
I am not alone in wondering what the status of Limerick City & County Council’s Smart CCTV surveillance system is. County councillors have been asking what the delay with the system is and it...
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DPC finds DEASP has been unlawfully processing child benefit data
Since 2008 the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection (DEASP) has issued child benefit beneficiaries with “eligibility certificates” which are, in fact, forms demanding personal...
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