Catt v the United Kingdom

Court: European Court of Human Rights

Application number: no 43514/15

Status of case: CLOSED (Implementation monitoring)

The case concerns Mr Catt’s complaint about the police collecting and retaining his personal data. Mr Catt, a peace movement activist and regular attender at demonstrations who has never been convicted of any offense, found in 2010 that the police had collected and retained data about him in a police database. He asked for entries in the database which mentioned him to be deleted, but the police refused. 

In judicial review proceedings, the UK Supreme Court ultimately held by four votes to one in March 2015 that retaining the data had been in accordance with the law and proportionate. Relying on Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life, the home, and the correspondence), Mr Catt complained about the police’s retention of his personal data.

Privacy International's intervention focuses on the surveillance emerging technologies deployed by the police (e.g. facial recognition, body warn camera, social media intelligence, etc.) and their effects on the right to privacy.

On 24 January 2019, the European Court of Human Rights, in agreement with our position, concluded that police powers to retain personal data in "extremism database" violates the rights of Mr Catt. 

Monitoring compliance with judgment

The Department for the Execution of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights continues to monitor the implementation of measures by the UK to ensure compliance with the findings of the judgment. On 10 March 2023, we submitted a communication underlining that further measures are needed to include specific procedural safeguards which relate to the disposal of sensitive personal data, in particular such which reveal data subject’s political opinions. Furthermore, that the NCIA database must be subject to robust, transparent and effective safeguards in order to protect the right to privacy.