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Drunk Driver’s Privacy Rights Violated, Human Rights Court Rules

Drunk Driver’s Privacy Rights Violated, Human Rights Court Rules

(Bloomberg) -- Northern Ireland police violated the privacy rights of a convicted drunk driver when they held on to his DNA profile indefinitely, the top European human rights tribunal said, in a ruling reining in the powers of authorities to store vast amounts of data on citizens.

While Northern Irish police agreed to destroy the DNA sample taken from Fergus Gaughran after his 2008 arrest, their decision to retain his DNA profile was wrong given most European countries had time limits on storing such personal information, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Thursday.

“The applicant’s biometric data and photographs had been retained without reference to the seriousness of his offense and without regard to any continuing need to retain that data indefinitely,’ the ECHR concluded. Police in the case “failed to strike a fair balance between the competing public and private interests,” the court said.

European Union courts, which are separate from the Strasbourg-based ECHR, have also criticized the storage of personal information, particularly telecoms providers, without time limits or clear justification. In 2014, they annulled the bloc’s data retention law over privacy concerns.

Gaughran, who paid a fine and was banned from driving for 12 months, had argued that he had also been denied the right to any meaningful review on how long police would retain his biometric data.

That argument was also accepted by the ECHR, which nevertheless declined to offer any damages to Gaughran, saying the finding of a violation “was in itself sufficient.”

--With assistance from Aoife White and Stephanie Bodoni.

To contact the reporter on this story: Hugo Miller in Geneva at hugomiller@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Peter Chapman, Christopher Elser

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