The FTT has considered the public interests relating to the section 30 FOIA exemption, where  information was held for the purposes of investigation, in Breeze v IC and the Chief Constable of Norfolk Constabulary and the Crown Prosecution Service EA/2011/0057.

Mr Breeze  requested  ‘A copy of the 400 page case report or similar document compiled by Norfolk police for submission to the CPS as part of Operation Meridian’ from the Chief Constable of Norfolk Constabulary. The background to his request was that in about September 2007 his brother, Mr. Andrew Breeze (“AB”), had been charged jointly with a fellow director, Dominic Wilson (“DW”), with conspiring to defraud the National Health Service of about £2,000,000 by dishonestly claiming very substantial fees for extra care for patients at the private psychiatric hospital, Cawston Park in Norfolk which they owned and ran. The case had been referred to the police by NHS Counter Fraud Service, a department within the NHS. They had been tried in 2009. Several weeks into their trial at Norwich Crown Court the judge directed verdicts of not guilty following acknowledgement by the prosecution that the jury could not properly be invited to convict either of them on the evidence adduced. The judge emphasised that both left the court “with their heads held high”. It was subsequently accepted by the CPS that the case should not have come to court.  HM Solicitor General made a statement to the House of Commons acknowledging this, apologising to both defendants and repeating the judge`s exoneration. T he Chief Constable of Norfolk Constabulary launched an investigation under the auspices of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (“the IPCC”) into the conduct of the police investigation (“Operation Meridian”). Mr Breeze complained to the CPS which established its own inquiry as to what had gone wrong after the matter had been referred for a decision as to prosecution.

The Information Commissioner decided that section 30(1)(a)FOIA was engaged (as information that had been held at any time for the purposes of any investigation which the public authority has a duty to conduct with a view to it being ascertained whether a person should be charged with an offence, or whether a person charged with an offence is guilty of it). He found that the public interest in maintaining the exemption prevailed. In the circumstances, the Commissioner did not go on to consider whether section 40 FOIA was also engaged. Mr Breeze appealed against the Commissioner’s decision.

The FTT commented that the consequences for the defendants were disastrous financially and, for a considerable time, in terms of reputation. The wasted financial cost to the exchequer was considerable. There is plainly a substantial public interest in righting such wrongs, if or in so far as that can be achieved and discovering why such a costly mistake occurred. On the other hand, there are substantial public interests involved in the protection of confidential information generated by a criminal investigation and of the identity of witnesses, potential witnesses and, very obviously, patients receiving treatment in any kind of hospital. The ICO had considered the public interest issues raised in relation to the performance of the Norfolk Constabulary in Operation Meridian i.e. the public interest in protecting the flow of future information to the police by shielding witnesses and potential witnesses from public identification and preserving, where possible, the confidentiality of police inquiries. However, the IPCC had subsequently been involved and therefore the FTT joined the CPS as a party, so that it could also consider the public interest in knowing the role of the CPS in the investigation and the evidential basis on which the CPS took the decision to charge, given the failure of the prosecution before the intended close of its case.  The FTT “invited the CPS to consider waiving privilege as to the content of counsel`s advice as to charging and later as to the sufficiency of the evidence. The CPS courteously declined to waive, as it was fully entitled to do. We draw no adverse conclusions from a perfectly legitimate decision“.

The FTT considered the rationale for section 30 and found that it was for (a) the protection of witnesses and informers to ensure that people are not deterred from making statements or reports by the fear that they may be publicised, (b) the maintenance of the independence of the judicial and prosecution processes  (c) the preservation of the criminal court as the sole forum for determining guilt and (d) the importance of ensuring that the police and CPS communicate frankly and fearlessly, free of any concern that every recommendation or reservation will be routinely exposed to public scrutiny, if the prosecution fails. The protection from prolonged exposure to publicity of witnesses and those who made statements but were not required as witnesses was a further factor in this case, though its importance varied from one witness to another. The FTT concluded that the Solicitor General`s statement in Parliament said all that could reasonably be said about the shortcomings of the CPS performance and therefore to a very substantial degree the information which might be provided by disclosure of the Case Summary was already in the public domain, in a more readily accessible form. The FTT therefore upheld the Commissioner’s decision that the balance of the public interest was in favour of maintaining the exemption in section 30(1).

Rachel Kamm, 11KBW

Further to Robin’s post of 21 February 2012, the Court of Appeal handed down judgment in Kennedy v Charity Commission [2012] EWCA Civ 317 yesterday. There is a short article on the judgment in The Lawyer this week.

The second edition of the Information Law Reports is now available. Reported cases include: OFCOM v Information Commissioner, Department of Health v IC, University of Newcastle upon Tyne v Information Commissioner and BUAV.

The third edition of the Information Law Reports will be released in late March 2012. Reported cases include: Birkett v DEFRA, Colleen Smith v IC and Devon & Cornwall Constabulary, Voyias v IC and Camden, Keiller v IC and University of East Anglia.

The reports are edited by Timothy Pitt-Payne QC, Anya Proops, and Robin Hopkins, three of the leading practitioners in the field of information law and members of 11KBW’s Information Law Group.

For more information on the Information law reports and how you get your free trial click here

In Summers, the First-Tier Tribunal has revisited the application of the national security exemption which was previously examined in the case of Kalman v IC (application of s. 24 to airport security arrangements – see my earlier post on the Kalman case). The principal issue in Summers was whether the IC had erred in concluding that information comprising the total amount spent by the Metropolitan Police’s Royal Protection Unit in a particular year was exempt from disclosure under s. 24 FOIA. In a robust judgment, the Tribunal held that the Commissioner had been right to conclude both that s. 24 was engaged in respect of the information and that the public interest balance weighed in favour of maintaining the exemption. Notably, the Tribunal rejected the Appellant’s case that the Royal Family was not integral to our domestic constitutional arrangements and, hence, could not give rise to national security considerations. In reaching this conclusion, the Tribunal adopted the broad approach to construing the concept of national security approved in Kalman. The Tribunal also found that, whilst taken in isolation the information may not be significant, when placed within a larger mosaic of information already available within the public domain, the information could be of use to terrorists and other criminals wishing to target members of the Royal Family (see further the discussion of the ‘mosaic effect’ at paras. 73 et seq). The Tribunal went on to conclude that, in all the circumstances, the public interest balance weighed firmly in favour of the s. 24 exemption being maintained. The Tribunal also considered the application of the exemptions provided for in ss. 31 (prevention of crime) and 38 (health and safety). It found that the information was also exempt under these sections.

Finally, the Tribunal was asked to consider whether the public interest considerations applicable to all three exemptions should be aggregated together, as per Ofcom v IC (Case C-71/10 (ECJ)). The Tribunal held that the issue was strictly academic as it had found that the information was exempt under each of the three individual exemptions in any event. However, it went on to comment obiter that, had aggregation been in issue, it would have ‘unhesitatingly’ held that the aggregated interests in maintaining the exemptions outweighed the public interests in disclosure (para. 96).

The Tribunal has considered the scope of the absolute exemption in section 23 FOIA, where information relates to one of a number of specified security bodies (Dowling v Information Commissioner and the Police Service for Northern Ireland, EA/2011/ 0118).

The requester, a journalist, asked the Police Service for Northern Ireland to provide him with a copy of a report known as Stevens III. The summary of this report by Mr John Stevens (as he then was) had been published in 2003 and recorded that he had found “collusion between the RUC and loyalist groups, whereby RUC agents were allowed to engage in terrorist attacks, indeed murder, evidence of such attacks was mishandled by investigators, important intelligence was suppressed and warnings of threatened attacks were provided to Catholic targets much less frequently than to Loyalist. Agents were allowed to operate beyond any control. Sir John concluded that his investigations had been subject to widespread obstruction both by RUC and army personnel, even involving arson. Lives, including the lives of Finucane and Lambert, could have been saved and serious crimes prosecuted to conviction but for such disgraceful misconduct” (judgment at [8]). The full report had not been published due to security concerns.

The Police Service for Northern Ireland refused the request, relying on a number of exemptions (including the absolute exemption in section 23). The issue for the Tribunal was the meaning of “relates to” in section 23. It found that the section 23 exemption “has nothing to do with any direct damage to national security (see s.24). It expressly protects any direct or indirect security source of requested information but goes much further” (judgment at [18]). “Information describing a [specified security body] or its activities is clearly covered but “relates to” plainly extends beyond that” (judgment at [19]). It concluded that “any significant connection between such a body and such information is caught” (judgment at [20]).

Interestingly, the Tribunal commented that “As the appellant observes in his grounds and as has been said in Parliament, it is difficult to conceive of more serious charges made against organs of the state than those contained in the published Stevens III” (judgment at [8]) … “Whilst the personality and motives of a requester under FOIA are immaterial, it is hard to imagine a subject in which the Irish public, hence Irish journalists, could have a greater legitimate interest than the full content of Stevens III, recording, as it does, the conduct of certain elements of the police and the security forces. That said, the public interest is not an issue here since the exemption under scrutiny is absolute” (judgment at [9]). Given these comments, it may be that this was a case where the Tribunal would have welcomed some discretion.

Rachel Kamm, 11KBW

The Government is seeking evidence on the  new legislative proposals for data protection, which were published by the European Commission on 25 January 2012. Responses are due by 6 March 2012 and can be submitted online here. The European Commission aims to have a final agreed legislative framework by 2014.

The European Commission has published in draft both a Regulation and a Directive. The proposed Regulation will set out a general EU framework for data protection to replace the 1995 Data Protection Directive, which is implemented into UK law by the Data Protection Act 1998. The proposed Directive will cover the protection of personal data processed for the purposes of prevention, detection, investigation or prosecution of criminal offences and related judicial activities (to replace the existing Data Protection Framework Decision).  For those of you who have not looked  at the proposals yet, the Government’s Call for Evidence is a good place to start for a summary.

Rachel Kamm

I have previously blogged here on why the use of the BitTorrent peer to peer file sharing protocol to distribute large amounts of information over the internet has proved problematic for the law, see Privacy of internet users, internet file-sharing and copyright: the present “Wild West” and the Digital Economy Act 2010

On 12 January 2012, the Technology & Construction Court demonstrated a readiness to tackle BitTorrent seeders in appropriate cases. In AMP-v- Persons Unknown [2011] EWHC 3454 (TCC) the Claimant’s explicit private digital photographic images had been stored on her mobile phone which was stolen while she was at University. Following the theft, the images of her were uploaded to a free online media hosting service for the sharing of images. They were then also uploaded to a Swedish site hosting BitTorrent files.

Ramsey J granted the Claimant an interim injunction to prevent the distribution of the images both by conventional downloading and by downloading by the use of the BitTorrent Protocol.

Unsurprisingly, the court found that the publication of the images infringed the Claimant’s right to respect for her private and family life under Article 8 and that right outweighed the rights of freedom of expression of users of BitTorrent client software to download the digital photographic images using the BitTorrent protocol and to disseminate them by seeding them.

Ramsay J. found that the users of the BitTorrent client software who were downloading and uploading the digital images had no rights in that information and that information was of a personal, private and confidential nature which the Courts should protect.

The court also found that the Claimant had a good arguable case that the conduct of disseminating the digital photographic images amounted to harassment of the Claimant under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.

Interestingly, the Respondents who were named in the application as “Persons Unknown” were neither present nor represented and the Claimant had not taken all practical steps to notify them. However, the Judge considered there were compelling reasons why they should not be notified. If each Defendant had to be notified before the Injunction were granted it would effectively deprive the Claimant of the opportunity to obtain the immediate interim relief which would otherwise be appropriate to protect her Article 8 rights.

The court accepted expert evidence to the effect that seeders of the BitTorrent files could be identified by way of their Internet Protocol Addresses whilst they were seeding and that it would therefore be possible to obtain the IP Address of every seeder and identify from that address their physical location, name and address from their Internet Service Provider. They could therefore be served with an order requiring them to take steps to stop their account from being used.