'A spy in your pocket'? The regulation of mobile data in the UK

Abstract

The growth of mobile digital communication devices has seen a corresponding growth in the data created by users in the course of their mobile communications. The ease with which such data - including sensitive timedependent location information - can be collected and stored raises clear data protection and concerns. The value such data offers to both law enforcement agencies and the private sector has complicated regulatory responses to such data protection concerns. This has lead to the contradictory situation in which mobile data is used by the law enforcement agencies and the private sector to identify individual users, yet this same information is not considered to be ’personal data’.