ICO Publishes Register Of Data Breaches And Individual Complaints

It's become something of a trope that the UK's data protection regulator is a soft touch when it comes to enforcement.

Critics point to its reticence to wield the stick against the private sector while at the same time giving government departments a second, third or fourth bite of the carrot for their (sometimes significant) breaches of data protection laws. Indeed, the ICO has signaled its intention to consider a range of enforcement actions against the government in order to avoid the money from any penalties simply bouncing between Treasury departments.

Clearly there's more nuance to the question of whether the ICO could or should be a regulatory Rottweiler. And although I'm not one for hyperbole, I'll make an exception for a development that, in its own quiet way, shows the ICO to have taken one of the more aggressive stances of any European regulator this year.