MR JUSTICE WARBY
Approved Judgment
NT1 & NT2 v Google LLC
109.
Nor can Google rely on Condition 10 of Schedule 3 and paragraph 3 of the Schedule
to the Data Protection (Processing of Sensitive Personal Data) Order 2000 (SI
2000/417), made by the Secretary of State pursuant to Condition 10. That condition
is, in substance, a narrower version of DPA s 32. It lays down a set of requirements
which are cumulative (see Campbell v MGN Ltd [2002] EWHC 499 (QB) [121]
(Morland J)). Among the requirements are that the processing in question is “for the
special purposes”, and “with a view to the publication of … data by any person”.
Whatever else might be said about the application of this Condition to the facts of this
case, the existence of those two requirements means that Google’s argument is
unsound, for the reasons I have given in deciding the Exemption Issue.
110.
The Schedule 3 condition that I do find satisfied is Condition 5: that “the information
contained in the personal data has been made public as a result of steps deliberately
taken by the data subject”. In reaching that conclusion I am following a path already
trodden by Stephens J in Townsend v Google Inc [2017] NIQB 81, and a principle that
seems to be logical, and well-established in domestic and European law. In Townsend,
Stephens J refused an application for leave to serve proceedings on Google in
California, claiming remedies under the DPA in respect of the processing of
information about the convictions of a prolific offender. (By the age of 24 the plaintiff
had accumulated 74 convictions, of which only 2 were spent). One of Stephens J’s
conclusions was that Sch 3 Condition 5 was so clearly satisfied that the contrary was
not arguable, so there was no triable issue. He reasoned, at [62], that “legally as a
consequence of the open justice principle by committing an offence [the offender] is
deliberately taking steps to make the information public”. Mr Tomlinson quarrels
with this analysis. He argues that the Claimant took no steps, deliberate or otherwise,
to “make the information contained in the data” public.
Condition 5, he says
“requires some act of dealing with information”. An offender such as NT1, who
commits an offence in private, is by no means deliberately making his conduct public.
I do not believe this reasoning is sound.
111.
First of all, the wording of condition 5 is important. It does not require a deliberate
decision or “step” by the data subject “to make” the information public, but rather (a)
the taking by him of a deliberate step or steps, as a result of which (b) the information
is “made public”. A person who deliberately conducts himself in a criminal fashion
runs the risk of apprehension, prosecution, trial, conviction, and sentence. Publicity
for what happens at a trial is the ordinary consequence of the open justice principle:
“An important aspect of the public interest in the administration
of criminal justice is that the identity of those convicted and
sentenced for criminal offices should not be concealed.
Uncomfortable though it may frequently be for the defendant
that is a normal consequence of his crime”:
Re Trinity Mirror plc [2008] EWCA Crim 50 [2008] QB 770 [32] (Sir Igor Judge P).
The same must be true of the details of the offending, and other information disclosed
in open court, including information about himself which a criminal reveals at a trial
or in the course of an application. The European Court of Human Rights was making
a related point, I think, in Axel Springer AG v Germany (2012) 32 BHRC [83]. The
applicant complained of sanctions imposed for reporting information about a
celebrity’s arrest, conviction, and sentence for possession of cocaine. Finding a
violation of Article 10, the Court observed that, whilst reputation is protected by