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United Kingdom

ECtHR: UK’s indefinite retention of convicts’ fingerprints, photographs and DNA profiles breaches Article 8 absent effective deletion mechanisms and offence‑sensitive retention criteria (Gaughran v United Kingdom)

Published on: 19 February 2020

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Gaughran v United Kingdom (App No 45245/15) [2020] ECHR 45245/15

What are the practical implications of this case?

Confirming Lord Kerr’s dissent in the Supreme Court (Gaughran v Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland [2015] UKSC 29), [2015] 2 WLR 1303, the ECtHR concluded that the policy amounted to an unjustified interference with Mr Gaughran’s Article 8 rights. The court did not, though, propose any new overarching principles for such policies. It remains apparent that evaluation is fact dependent; the more calibrated and precise a policy, the more likely it is to withstand examination. The ECtHR’s divergence from the Supreme Court stemmed largely from its reliance on slightly different factual foundations. Notably, in assessing proportionality under Article 8, the ECtHR placed significant weight on the lack of adequate procedural safeguards allowing an individual to apply for deletion of their data from the police database. The ECtHR also marked a significant distinction between fingerprints and photographs on the one hand, and DNA profiles on ...

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