ICO to pay back 250,000 fine after Scottish Borders Council wins appeal

The ICO has suffered a highly unusual and embarrassing reverse after a £250,000 ($375,000) fine it imposed on Scottish Borders Council (SBC) for carelessly disposing of paper records was ruled excessive by the Information Rights Tribunal.

Appeals against fines by the Inormation Commissioner are the exception and decisions against fines, especially ones as large as that levied on the Council last September, unheard of.

The original breach occurred in September 2011 when a member of the public discovered what turned out to be files containing personal data of 676 SBC employees in a supermarket paper recycling bank.

It later emerged that along with another 172 files, the records had been discarded by a third-party firm hired to digitise the Council's records. The firm had used public recycling banks as part of this contract for up to seven years before the discovery.

Two two issues that probably upped the fine to the £250,000 level could have included this unusually long period of time and the fact that the breach was only discovered by chance, both of which suggested a lack of system and oversight.

Neither seems to have impressed the Tribunal, which has now overturned the ruling and asked the ICO to pay back the £200,000 of the fine already handed over by the Council, the remaining £50,000 having been waived for early payment.

“I am extremely pleased with the outcome and have always strongly believed that the monetary penalty notice issued by the ICO in this case was unjust and disproportionate,” Council executive Tracey Logan said.

“Of course, I acknowledge that there were gaps in our processes in this case - but we have taken significant steps to address these since the breach to ensure data protection continues to be a high priority across the Council,” she said.

In comments to the BBC, the ICO accepted that the Tribunal had not been convinced that the breach had led to actual harm to the individuals concerned.

"We are disappointed with the result and await the full ruling from the tribunal confirming the reasons for its decision, before deciding whether to appeal," a spokesperson was quoted as saying.

"We do not take the decision to issue a monetary penalty lightly and follow a thorough process before serving an organisation with a penalty notice.

"The tribunal agreed with us that the breach, which led to over 600 pension records being found in an overfilled paper recycling bank in a supermarket car park, was a serious one, but we were unable to satisfy them that it was likely to lead to substantial damage or substantial distress being caused to the individuals affected."

The ICO can console itself that a separate appeal by Sony over a £250,000 fine for the infamous and vast hack of its systems in 2011 was rejected in the Information Commissioner's favour only days before the Scottish Borders Council ruling.

Given the scale of that breach, the appeal always seemed like a long shot by Sony. Most of the ICO's notable rulings are against public sector organisations; to have lost one against one in the private-sector would have counted as a major setback.

Canadian Team Claims $250,000 Prize for Human-Powered Helicopter

The Canadian AeroVelo team has done what many thought impossible. The crew has officially claimed the American Helicopter Society’s Igor I. Sikorsky Human-Powered Helicopter Prize. And for keeping their lightweight contraption afloat, the team was awarded $250,000 in Toronto for the flight it completed on June 13. But meeting the criteria of a 33-year-old challenge takes time, so they had to wait for verification from the Federation d’Aviation Intenationale before the team could snag the prize.

Engineer Dr. Todd Reichert, along with Cameron Robertson, led the Kickstarter-funded team largely comprised of students from the University of Toronto. He was also the pilot and engine who successfully pedaled his way into aviation history by climbing above three meters and flying for at least 60 seconds while staying within a 10-by-10 meter area. Reichert, a nationally ranked speed skater in Canada, told us after so many flights and failures, the prize-winning attempt almost didn’t happen.

On June 13, after earlier flights reaching between 2 and 2.5 meters, AeroVelo only had enough time for one last attempt before they had to evacuate the indoor soccer facility where they have been flying before evening practices were set to start. And Reichert knew the biggest challenge would happen mid-flight.

“For us, the dangerous part is coming down from altitude,” he says of the time when the helicopter can get pulled into its own downwash. “Climbing is no problem — it’s in the time period between 15 and 40 seconds that is really tough.”

Once he managed to carefully descend from 3.3 meters, he had to keep pedaling while controlling the drifting aircraft.

“You’re throwing everything you have into it,” he said. But because of the control challenge, even after exceeding the 60-second requirement, there was no time to think about the prize in the final few seconds. “There is really zero thought of, ‘oh, I can do it.’ There is no feeling, only doing.”

The AHS first put up the challenge back in 1980 and since then more than 20 teams teams have designed and built human-powered helicopters in an attempt to win what was initially a $10,000 prize. Though only a few of those actually made it off the ground.

The competition heated up beginning in 2009 when Sikorsky Aircraft increased the prize to $250,000. Since then the Canadian AeroVelo team and Team Gamera from the University of Maryland have been in a tight battle to be the first to fly a human-powered helicopter to fit the stringent requirements set by Sikorsky.

“That is exactly why we raised the stakes,” Sikorsky’s Mark Miller said in a statement. “To encourage creative thinkers to prove that what is considered impossible is often proven to be possible.”

The AeroVelo Atlas uses a four-rotor system, with each blade spanning 67 feet. The carbon tube frame weighs just 115 pounds. And unlike the University of Maryland’s Gamera where the pilot/engine uses both legs and arms to power the aircraft, the Atlas uses a modified bicycle frame suspended from the helicopter by lightweight cord, with only the the pilot’s legs for power.

One of the challenges for both teams was finding an indoor space large enough to fly. AeroVelo first flew in August of last year, and since then has had to work around the schedule of the indoor soccer facility where they fly. With an overall width of 190 feet, the Atlas needs a lot of space for its slow-turning rotors.

The record-setting flight took place after a five-day testing sprint. Earlier this year flights ended with damage to the Atlas. Both Atlas and Gamera are extremely delicate and difficult to control, and for a while it seemed that the teams were set on an on/off schedule, with one team flying while the other was rebuilding.

Reichert says the prize is great, but it has always been about the challenge.

“It isn’t really about the prize,” he says. “It’s about satisfaction of finishing something that you have set yourself to.”

The students at the University of Maryland sent their congratulations to their competitors and fellow engineers at AeroVelo after learning about the team’s success.

“No one knows better than we do the enormously difficult engineering and human performance challenges that must be overcome in order to meet these flight requirements,” the team said in a statement. “We salute this historic accomplishment of the AeroVelo team and the intense dedication, innovation, research and hard work we know it required.”

Reichert and AeroVelo co-founder Cameron Robertson are continuing to work on new projects with students and the public.

“We want to use it as a platform to inspire people,” Reichert says, “more specifically to look at doing more with less.”

After flying the slow-moving helicopter, next up is something with a bit more speed. Reichert says they are working with students on a streamlined bicycle that can achieve highway speeds. It’s likely to elicit scoffs of disbelief from the cycling crowd, but a human-powered helicopter still sounds crazy, and he’s already checked that off the list.