Reprimand given to the Metropolitan Police by the Information Commissioner
Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.22.026106
I note you seek access to the following information:
Details of the reprimand given to the Metropolitan Police by the Information Commissioner in June 2020 under Article 58(2)(b) of the UK GDPR, whether this was a formal notice outlining the breach of data protection or an email/letter laying out the facts behind and reasoning leading towards the reprimand.
Decision
I have today decided to disclose some of the requested information. Some data has been withheld as it is exempt from disclosure and therefore this response serves as a Refusal Notice under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act) by virtue of the following exemptions:
Section 31(3) - Law Enforcement
Reason for decision
Section 31(1)(a) - Law Enforcement - provides that any information is exempt if its disclosure under the Act would, or would be likely to, prejudice the prevention or detection of crime.
I have claimed this exemption in that the requested reprimand contains the email address of the Met’s Data Protection Officer. The public release of this email address would provide persons intent on disrupting the work of the MPS, with information that would assist them in this endeavour.
Disruption to the Work of Senior Members of Staff - The release of the email address of the Met’s Data Protection Officer, would provide persons intent on disrupting the work of the MPS, with information that would assist them to do so. In this regard, a person within this intent would be likely to use this information to make inappropriate contact with this member of staff and/or send them vast amounts of unsolicited correspondence. This would tie up their resources and cause disruption to their work. Any hindrance to the work of the Met’s Data Protection Officer would harm the Met’s work in the area of data protection. This would in turn, prejudice the ability of the MPS to prevent and detect crime.
Evaluation - When considering whether the release of information is in the public interest, I have to consider whether the public interest is in favour of releasing information into the public domain or whether there is sufficient reason to support withholding the requested information. Having considered your request, I accept that there is a public interest in transparency when any request is made for police information. The public interest favouring release must be balanced against any associated risk and/or prejudice that would be caused through disclosure.
Having carefully considered this, I have found that the public release and publication of the email address of the Met’s Data Protection Officer, would provide persons intent on disrupting the work of this member of staff, with information that would assist them in this endeavour. Given this and the fact that the removal of this information does not detract from the quality of the record disclosed, I have found that the release of this information is not in the public interest. I have accordingly withheld this email address under the Act.
Disclosure
I have disclosed the located reprimand to you in redacted format, that is, I have removed the following information:
- The email address of Darren Curtis, the Met’s Head of Information Law and Security and the Met’s Data Protection Officer.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
It should be noted that that postal address for the Met’s Data Protection Officer, has now changed. The contact details for our Data Protection Officer can be found within our published Privacy Notice.