This comment considers the Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights judgment in Catt v United Kingdom. This case concerned the applicant’s complaint regarding the collection and retention of personal data which included their political views on a police ‘domestic extremist’ database. The Chamber unanimously held that Article 8 had been violated taking into account the nature of the personal data, the age of the applicant and the fact they had no history or prospect of committing acts of violence. Whilst the Chamber found that the collection of personal data had been justified, its retention had not, particularly considering the lack of safeguards.

Reconciling big data techniques with a legal approach relying on prior consent has proved difficult. By definition, when organisations collection personal information for data-led investigations they do not know what the results and impact of their processing will be. This paper suggests how other parts of the current European data protection framework can provide more effective protection for individuals, better guidance for big data users, and more effective tools for regulators. Splitting big data into collection, analysis and intervention stages, and applying appropriate legal provisions to each, could guide the development of privacy-respecting big data techniques that support the needs of individuals, businesses and society.

In the modern interconnected world heavily relying on the Internet, individuals, criminal organisations, governments and others can use and abuse these infrastructures. Online anonymity is a core concept in protecting the rights to freedom of expression, privacy and data protection and is of crucial importance to any free and democratic society. It serves as a condition for avoiding identification and means that persons act or communicate online and do not use their own names or identities, use substitute names or real names or identities are well-protected and cannot be determined. There are, however, perceivable intentions of governments, for instance, in the United Kingdom and France, to establish far-going surveillance mechanisms on the World Wide Web, significantly restrict anonymity of online users and limit their right to privacy. Therefore, a pertinent question arises as to whether there is a legal right to online anonymity providing a sufficiently high degree of protection to those entering the limitless world of the Internet.Until now, the right to online anonymity cannot be said to have been fully recognised under international law. The present contribution adopts literature review as the main legal research method and by exploring whether it is possible to identify a right or an emerging right to anonymity online as a fundamental right under international law indicates that some traces of this right can already be perceived in international law, establishes its acceptance level and elaborates on its interplay with freedom of expression and the rights to privacy and data protection. The article provides insights on the significance of this right and its added value in the Internet infrastructures as a facilitator of safe and anonymous telecommunications and sheds light on its legal foundations and actual legal status. Furthermore, it examines requirements for the applicability of this right, existing State obligations and restrictions employed to limit or eradicate online users' anonymity. Finally, conclusions are drawn with respect to the right to online anonymity and its potential for the future.

This paper considers issues of online privacy violation. It, firstly, applies behavioural analysis in order to explore the reasons why individuals choose to communicate online and then proceeds to question whether the concept of privacy has become superfluous in this context. The “privacy paradox” is therefore reasoned and, following this discussion, a future path for legal intervention is proposed based on a streamlined award of discursive remedies for those who have had their privacy violated but would prefer not to go through the courts. Keywords: Social media, oversharing, privacy paradox, privacy reform, discursive remedies.