Legal guarantees of privacy in the United Kingdom: (lack of) data protection after Brexit

In British law, the legal references for what we currently identify as privacy law are closely related to the protection of citizens' personal information. The 1984 Data Protection Act was pioneering data protection legislation, and even inspired Directive 95/46/EC, now repealed by General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679. A second stage of privacy protection in the United Kingdom was consolidated with the approval of the 1998 Human Rights Act - in the image and likeness of the European Convention on Human Rights -, which represented a turning point for the United Kingdom legal system, acting as a Bill of Rights in the British constitutional order and which, from then on, recognized the right to privacy in its Article 8. This issue is currently immersed in a third stage, made up of various events, and its future is still to be determined. On the one hand, there has been a reduction in the high standard of protection that privacy enjoyed in the United Kingdom thanks to the special legislation enacted over the last 15 years. On the other hand, Brexit makes it necessary to reconsider the privacy protection model, in addition to data protection, since when the "disconnection" takes place, the United Kingdom will be considered a "third country" and the data flow between it and the EU will be "international transfers". Meanwhile, the Data Protection Regulation has come into force. It is also directly applicable in the United Kingdom and, until the latter leaves the European Union, it obliges British legislation to adapt to the new European legislation, as it has done through the 2018 Data Protection Act.