94-year-old wins privacy human rights case against UK over data
A 94-year-old lifelong peace activist has won a ruling at the European Court of Human Rights that the UK was in breach of the European Convention by retaining his personal data in a police database for “domestic extremists”.
A chamber of seven judges unanimously found in favour of John Catt, in his case complaining of a breach of his right to private life under article 8 of the Convention.
Mr Catt, a regular attender at demonstrations of various kinds, began in 2005 to take part in protests by a group called Smash EDO against the Brighton factory of US arms company EDO MBM Technology Ltd. The protests involved disorder and a large police presence.
In March 2010 Mr Catt, who has never been convicted of any offence, made a request to the police under the Data Protection Act 1998 for any information being held about him. The police disclosed 66 entries collected from March 2005 to October 2009, mostly related to Smash EDO, but also concerning 13 other demonstrations and events. These included attendance at a Trades Union Congress conference in Brighton in 2006, at a demonstration at a Labour Party conference in 2007 and a pro-Gaza meeting in 2009.
After the police declined to delete the entries Mr Catt sought judicial review. The English High Court held that article 8 was not engaged and, even if it were, the interference had been justified. Mr Catt won an appeal to the Court of Appeal, which found the retention of his data had been disproportionate, but in March 2015 the UK Supreme Court, by four votes to one, upheld an appeal by the police and ruled that retaining the data had been in accordance with the law and proportionate. In particular, the invasion of privacy had been minor: the information obtained was already in the public domain and was not intimate or sensitive. There were also good policing reasons why such data had to be collected and retained, even if it concerned protesters with no criminal record or likelihood of being violent.
Finding for Mr Catt, the Strasbourg court expressed concern about aspects of the provisions for collecting personal data in the database, particularly the lack of a clear definition of “domestic extremism”, but focused on whether there had been a justification for interfering with Mr Catt’s rights by holding data on him.
Like the Supreme Court it found that there were good policing reasons why such data had to be collected: Smash EDO’s activities were known to be violent and potentially criminal. While Mr Catt had never been violent or shown any tendency towards such behaviour, he had identified himself repeatedly and publicly with that group. However the continued retention of his data had been disproportionate because it was personal data which revealed political opinions and so had enhanced protection; it had been accepted that Mr Catt did not pose a threat to anyone, also taking into account his age; and there had been a lack of effective procedural safeguards.
This lack included the absence of a time limit on how long data should be kept, the only definite rule being that information would be held for a minimum of six years before being reviewed. In Mr Catt’s case it was not clear that any reviews had taken place. Further, privacy resolutions passed by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe indicated that there should be maximum time limits for holding certain kinds of information. The court was also concerned about the effectiveness of legal challenge as a safeguard in this case, because the police had actually held more data on Mr Catt at the time of the domestic proceedings than previously acknowledged.
In any event, the decision to retain information on him had not had regard to the heightened protection for data revealing a person’s political opinion.
Lastly, the court rejected a Government argument that it would be too difficult to review and delete all the data on Mr Catt as the extremism database was not automated, as domestic guidance showed that review and deletion had been intended.
The court awarded no compensation as Mr Catt had stated that the finding of a violation would be sufficient, but allowed him €27,000 euro in respect of costs and expenses for the proceedings in Strasbourg.