EU taking UK to court for privacy deficiencies

Last year, ORG and others including No2DPI campaigned against Phorm, a technology that opened web traffic at ISPs to create profiles for behavioural advertising.

Phorm showed there are big holes in the UK privacy laws. In particular, the UK needs an official body to deal with citizens’ complaints about illegal commercial interception and enforce our legal privacy rights.

The result was that the EU Commission threatened to take the Uk to court. Such action is extremely rare, but today, they announced that they will do exactly that.

At the time, ORG made a technical analysis of Phorm alongside the Foundation for Information Policy Research and wrote to Commissioner Reding and her Commission’s officers in the wake of the Phorm complaint. 

ORG’s supporters also ran a successful campaign to persuade websites including Amazon to insist they were not scanned by Phorm’s technology.

There is of course plenty of time for the UK government to amend our laws, and avoid being taken to court.