Lorna Woods

Articles by: Lorna Woods

Data retention and the ANPR system: A gap in the oversight regime

3rd January 2017

Prof. Lorna Woods, University of Essex

LONG READ: The mass retention of data, even for the prevention of terrorism and serious crime, needs to be carefully justified. However, when it comes to Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), there appears to be a gap in the oversight regime. Professor Lorna Woods of Essex University warns that police use of ANPR data is exposed to legal challenge, with potentially serious consequences.

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Lorna Woods
Deputy Director of Research, School of Law, University of Essex
Email:
[email protected]

Profile
Lorna Woods was formerly a practising solicitor in an ICT practice in the City of London, she has extensive experience in the field of media policy and communications regulation, and she has published widely in this area (see list of publications). She is a recognised expert in the field having participated in a range of commissioned studies (such as the Hans Bredow Study on Co-regulation in the Media and the Rand Study on Internet Self-Regulation); and has given evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications with regards to plurality of provision of content and media ownership. Professor Woods was one of the co-directors of the Initiative on Impunity and the Rule of Law (http://www.cfom.org.uk/2011/02/impunity-and-the-rule-of-law/). She is currently the legal expert in in an FP7 funded project on cloud computing. In addition, Professor Woods is co-author of the textbook Steiner and Woods on EU Law (OUP) currently in its 11th edition and has written in the field of the internal market. She has taught EU law, copyright, media law, freedom of expression/privacy and data protection at a number of UK universities and was, until recently, a Director of the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism at City University London. She has supervised and examined PhDs in the fields of e-commerce, media regulation and copyright and freedom of expression. She is serving a second term as a member of the ESRC Peer Review College