Plus: Anti-Chocolate Factory campaign says it'll collect all the class-action damages, thank you
Gareth Corfield
Fri 30 Apr 2021 // 15:55 UTC
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A barrister for the Information Commissioner's Office hinted the regulator would stop enforcing the law on data breaches if the Supreme Court sides with Google in a case about class-action lawsuits.
The startling threat was made on behalf of the ICO by barrister Gerry Facenna QC, who was intervening on the authority's behalf in the Lloyd v Google data protection case.
"If a large number of data subjects have had their data lost, then they have
per se suffered damage: harm of the type that I described, namely loss of control of their data," Facenna told judges in the UK's highest court. "That is the commissioner's view of these provisions, that's the basis on which she takes regulatory action at the moment. If the word 'damage' in this regime does not include mere loss of control, it would have to be taken into account in the exercise of those regulatory barriers."