ICO wants more 'post-legislative scrutiny'

Privacy laws need greater post-legislative scrutiny so they work more effectively, information commissioner Christopher Graham has said.

While presenting a State of Surveillance report to parliament, Graham claimed if Government departments looked back at laws, they would help with the "successful delivery of the new transparency and privacy agenda."

The report had been requested by the Home Affairs Select Committee as part of an ongoing investigation into the surveillance state.

"Many of the new laws that come into force every year in the UK have implications for privacy at their heart," said Graham.

"My concern is that after they are enacted there is no one looking back to see whether they are being used as intended, or whether the new powers were indeed justified in practice."

He added: "One example of this is the use of covert CCTV surveillance by local councils to monitor parents in school catchment area disputes under powers designed to assist in crime prevention and detection."

The report suggested private companies should also consider the implications new technologies would have on privacy, but privacy-enhancing technologies should be more widespread.

Commissioner Graham was recently slammed by an MP for sending "non-technical" people to Google headquarters for an investigation into the the Street View scandal.

Google escaped any fine at the conclusion of the case in the UK, largely because most of the payload data taken from Wi-Fi connections was collected before the ICO's fining powers came into force.

This was despite Graham saying Google had committed a serious breach of the Data Protection Act.