ICO probes clients of private investigators who broke the law on their behalf

won't any (eventual) ICO fine

be the sort of sum that would buy a bunch of Bananas in Aldi?

....(very poor reference here to the Private Eye 'if this is justice, then I'm a Banana' meme)

"could result in a prosecution against the customers of dodgy private dicks."

Could but probably won't.

I know somebody who's probably been on this list, and the probable customer of the dodgy PI could well be a top ten UK law firm, working for a possibly state owned bank, whose employees are busy trying to hold the lid on widespread fraud.

From what I've seen so far, both from this friend's actual experience, and from the fact that SOCA sat on their fat over-pensioned arses and did nothing for years, I'm guessing that the old boy network will make sure nobody is held to account other than the handful of cannon-fodder PIs. What's particularly unimpressive is that this friend was on a witness protection programme as a key witness for the SFO during this time.

I'm in favour of employees or agents of bodies to whom we must hand over data under force of law (public authorities etc) being held personally liable for careless/reckless loss. A conviction, possibly with jail time, should prevent them being re-employed thus ensuring "that lessons really are learned".

For private companies, the ICO should have a range of options, possibly including the right to withdraw their permission to hold/process data (perhaps with 30 days notice to prevent absolute chaos). That really would be fun to watch. Once permission has been withdrawn from a company, with almost the certainty of corporate failure, you can be sure that pressure from disgruntled (ex-)customers, shareholders etc will ensure that other companies rapidly take their responsibilities much more seriously.