Data protection

The Divisional Court, in allowing the claimants’ application for judicial review, declared that s 1 of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 was incompatible with the requirements of European Union law insofar as it: (i) did not lay down clear and precise rules on access to, and use of, retained communications data to be strictly restricted to the purpose of preventing and detecting precisely defined serious offences or of conducting criminal prosecutions; and (ii) access to the data was not made dependent on a prior review by a court or an independent administrative body.