Dear Crown Prosecution Service,

On the 19 October 2020, 19:08:58 BST you received an email originating from me in which I requested " I am therefore formally requesting permission to prosecute under section 197 of the DPA.

Please record this as such and respond urgently in the public interest."

I have received no response.

On the 16 Dec 2020 at 18:43 you received an email originating from me which included the full test of my email of the 19 October 2020, 19:08:58 BST along with

"I do not believe the CPS has any reasonable doubt regarding my right to access the information requested and again I am formally requesting permission from the DPP to initiate a private prosecution against the CPS for criminal offences under section 173 of the DPA for your actions.

Please forward this communication to the DPP forthwith and confirm you have done so."

Again I have received no response.

Please provide any information as to the recording of either of those requests to prosecute, where those requests are currently located within the CPS administrative system and when the DPP or the staff member to whom the DPP has delegated the authority for responding, will be providing a response to these requests.

Please also state, if known, the current lag time between a request for permission to prosecute made to the DPP for any reason, and the usual response time to the applicant concerned.

Regards

W Hunter

Dear Crown Prosecution Service,

I have examined a number of FOIA requests made to you via this service and in every case, upon receipt of the request you have responded the same day with an automated acknowledgement , the text of which I have copied below.

My request, submitted on the 14th of January 2021 has not received any acknowledgement despite 8 days elapsing.

Please provide an explanation as to why your automated system has managed to ignore my request?

As this is not the first time a request from me via this site has not been responded to please confirm whether this is an issue which has only affected my submissions or whether other applications via this site have also been affected.

If possible please identify how many applications the CPS receive from this site, how many discrete individuals made those applications and of the applications made were not acknowledged or responded to within the legal time limit at all by individual.

I.e.
400 requests in total from 325 individuals
311 individuals made 1 request of which 23 were not acknowledged and 47 not responded to within 20 working days
1 individual made 4 requests of which 2 were not acknowledged
1 individual made 2 requests
Etc .

If you wish to classify this as a separate FOIA request then please do so.

Regards

W Hunter

Yours faithfully,

W Hunter

" Freedom of Information Act 2000 Request

Thank you for your Freedom of Information (FOI) request which we received
on 24 November 2020.

The FOI Act is a public disclosure regime, not a private regime. This
means that any information disclosed under the FOI Act by definition
becomes available to the wider public.

There is a 20 working day limit in which we are required to respond to
requests.

The deadline for your request is the 22 December 2020.

Yours sincerely,

Information Management Advisor

Information Access Team

Security and Information Assurance Division (SIAD)

0203 357 0788.

[1][CPS request email]

Dear Crown Prosecution Service,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Crown Prosecution Service's handling of my FOI request 'Records regarding requests to prosecute'.

Firstly I would like to thank you for providing yet further proof of a criminal breach of the DPA under section 173.

For an FOIA request to be valid, it must be in writing, request recorded information, and the applicant must use their real name, in my case Mr W Hunter.

You have responded to this, and indeed two other requests originating from me at this site thereby clearly proving that you, the data controller known as The Crown Prosecution Service are fully aware that Mr W Hunter is my name and that you have been more than happy with that fact in order to communicate with me regarding my FOIA requests.

In this response you have been provided with two pieces of verifiable information, specifically

"On the 19 October 2020, 19:08:58 BST you received an email originating from me "
and
"On the 16 Dec 2020 at 18:43 you received an email originating from me"

Having provided that information to you, you have not at any point questioned whether those communications originated from me, Mr W Hunter, rather in your response you have clearly stated:

"Response

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) neither confirms nor denies holding the information you have requested. Under section 40(5) of the FOI Act we are not obliged to confirm or deny whether we hold information which is, or if it were held would be, exempt on the basis that it relates to you. This exemption is absolute and does not require a public interest test. Please see attached section 17 notice which explains our decision.

Individuals are entitled to their personal data under the Data Protection Act 1998. Further guidance on how to access personal data is available from the following link:
https://www.cps.gov.uk/right-access-requ...

Please note any Right of Access request made to the CPS will require a data subject to confirm their identity by providing valid forms of identification."

Unfortunately section 40(5) of the FOIA applies only if the information is "exempt information by virtue of subsection (1)." which states:

"(1)Any information to which a request for information relates is exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject."

As you can see you have refused to confirm or deny because you state that the information requested by me is "exempt on the basis that it relates to you" thereby clearly establishing that you believe that the Mr W Hunter you are freely communicating with under the FOIA is the Mr Hunter who sent those two emails, thereby clearly stating that I am the data subject for the information within those two emails.

You have therefore just applied a lawful exemption on the basis that you KNOW that the information I have requested is my own information and therefore you are withholding it on that basis.

The problem being that you then end with the statement that "any Right of Access request made to the CPS will require a data subject to confirm their identity by providing valid forms of identification"

As I have previously specified to Ms Siddiqui and Ms Ronchetti, and indeed many other employees of the data controller "The Crown Prosecution Service" as specified in the DPA 2018 section 94 (5)(a)(i) states

"(5)Where a controller—

(a)reasonably requires further information—

(i)in order that the controller be satisfied as to the identity of the individual making a request under subsection (1)"

The GDPR also addresses this issue in article 12 (6) which states
"6. Without prejudice to Article 11, where the controller has reasonable doubts concerning the identity of the natural person making the request referred to in Articles 15 to 21, the controller may request the provision of additional information necessary to confirm the identity of the data subject."

In both cases the issue is reasonable doubt as to the identity of the requestor which then allows the data controller to ask for two forms of identification to identify not the individual, but the individual in relation to the records held.

Your response, clearly identifying that you know the person you are communicating with on this site regarding FOIA requests, is the same person to who the data within those two emails specified relates, is definitive evidence that the data controller "The Crown Prosecution Service", is fully aware of and satisfied with my identification under FOIA whilst claiming that the information requested under SAR originating from my email address is in fact being unlawfully blocked by a request for identification documentation which is clearly not required.

Again your statement that "any Right of Access request made to the CPS will require a data subject to confirm their identity by providing valid forms of identification" is in breach of the requirements of the DPA and GDPR as you are only allowed to request ID if you hold reasonable doubts or a reasonable belief that the person making the request is not the person entitled to receive it.

The CPS has refused at any point to provide any reasonable doubt or reasonable belief whilst refusing to process my SARs and again I would state that the refusal to process those requests is a criminal offence under section 173 of the DPA and I am again formally requesting permission to initiate a private prosecution against the CPS from the DPP in this matter.

That aside my FOIA request was

"Please provide any information as to the recording of either of those requests to prosecute, where those requests are currently located within the CPS administrative system and when the DPP or the staff member to whom the DPP has delegated the authority for responding, will be providing a response to these requests.

Please also state, if known, the current lag time between a request for permission to prosecute made to the DPP for any reason, and the usual response time to the applicant concerned."

Whether those requests to prosecute were recorded or not, where those requests are within your organisation and when I can expect a response from any person assigned to respond to these requests does not constitute personal information which can identify a living individual and therefore your alleged reason for the lawful exemption is invalid.

I would also draw your attention to section 94(6) of the DPA in which it states

"(6)Where a controller cannot comply with the request without disclosing information relating to another individual who can be identified from that information, the controller is not obliged to comply with the request unless—

(a)the other individual has consented to the disclosure of the information to the individual making the request, or

(b)it is reasonable in all the circumstances to comply with the request without the consent of the other individual."

I do not know how the ICO will interpret the alleged conflict between section 40 of the FOIA and section 94(6) of the DPA but as the Data Subject under both I consent to you giving me my information via this site and would assert that it is reasonable to do so since the requester under both pieces of legislation is the same natural person and data subject.

As a final point, yet again please consider this a formal SAR for any and all information relating to me held, current and archived, electronic or hard copy by the CPS, you can obtain my postal address from the records held by the IMU at CPS London or the CPS North East for your disclosure or from me when the person responsible for the response contacts me by telephone.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/r...

Yours faithfully,

W Hunter

Dear Ms Ronchetti,

As the DPO for the CPS you are required to inform your staff of their legal obligations and ensure that all staff within the CPS comply with the relevant areas of law under both the DPA and FOIA.

As you can see from my FOIA request for internal review in this matter, the staff within your FOIA department claimed an exemption under section 40 that the information requested was personal to me as the Data Subject.

Since your FOIA staff have clearly identified me in relation to emails originating from my email address sufficiently to use the exemption under section 40 I submitted a formal SAR within my FOIA internal review request.

By law the CPS must respond within one calendar month to any such request, however despite a long telephone call with Mr Cox in which I clearly articulated these points to him on your behalf, since you refused to speak to me yet again, he refused to acknowledge these points at all.

My SAR was received by the CPS, as evidenced by the automated acknowledgement as well as the response "Seeking" an extension to the time limit, an extension which is only applicable in public interest cases which this does not appear to be.

Yet again the CPS has refused to comply with a requirement under law and breached section 173 of the DPA and I formally request permission from the DPP permission to initiate a private prosecution against the CPS as specified in section 197 of the DPA.

Since every single request submitted directly to the CPS by email has simply been ignored, and all complaints have received no response perhaps sending this via a public forum may finally encourage an acknowledgement if nothing else.

Yours sincerely,

W Hunter