'Early doors' baffles data tsar

Working in a foreign country is an enriching experience. But moving to the UK, even from a country superficially as like-minded as New Zealand, can involve 'cultural glitches in the matrix', our Kiwi information commissioner said last night. 

John Edwards, who set up his own information law firm in 1993 and went on to serve as his country's privacy commissioner, reflected on a year of 'listening and learning' since his appointment under Boris Johnson. 'Everything looks the same but there are creepy anomalies you can’t get your head around,' he told lawyers. 

Language was an occasional source of bafflement: 'I was puzzled by people saing "early doors",' he said. Apparently the phrase - originally a theatrical expression - is not used down under. He also confessed to uncertainty about the correct pronunciation of 'data' - which in the southern hemisphere usually comes out (probably correctly) as 'darta'. Given the frequency with which the word pops up in his day job, he prefers to alternate the two. 

Edwards also observed that 'in New Zealand we have mountains’. Whoever coined the term 'the Peak District' should be prosecuted for false advertising, he said. But surely the UK has some respectable climbs? 'I did Snowden,' he recalled. ‘I think there was a point where I had to take my hand out of my pocket.’

Edwards told a Law Society event hosted by a fellow Kiwi, CMS partner Sam de Silva, that his mission in his five-year term is to create more certainty about data protection compliance. ‘That might sound like I want to eat your lunch,' he told a packed audience of data protection compliance experts. 'And I do.’

But given current controversies over post-GDPR law reform and international adequacy and the challenges of rapid technological change, Obiter can't see data protection specialists being rendered obsolete anytime soon.