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John Edwards, who spent the past eight years as New Zealand Privacy Commissioner and previously worked as a barrister, became the UK Information Commissioner on 4 January 2022.
His press release observed that “privacy is a right not a privilege” and he aims to “empower people to understand and influence how they want their data to be used, and to make it easy for people to access remedies if things go wrong”.
John Edwards’ appointment comes shortly after the out-going Information Commissioner’s blog post in which she observed that the “independence of the regulator is key to the high standards that will help deliver future global trade and adequacy agreements” and that she had “strong concerns” as to some of the proposals to amend the Data Protection Act “because of their risk to regulatory independence”. In his 4 January statement, Mr Edwards made no comments specifically concerning the proposed reforms to the Data Protection Act.
A monthly data protection bulletin from the barristers at 5 Essex Chambers
The Data Brief is edited by Francesca Whitelaw KC, Aaron Moss and John Goss, barristers at 5 Essex Chambers, with contributions from the whole information law, data protection and AI Team.