Did you think Ashley Madison was a big deal? Most of us know the story - a group of people who were looking online for affairs got outed because hackers took the database and dumped it online for everyone to see.

When the Ashley Madison data breach story first broke, it was quite isolated. It was a criminal matter for local authorities and a PR disaster for Ashley Madison itself, but that’s as far as it went.

Late last year, one of my senior investigating officers came to me with a file she’d been working on for quite a while. She was convinced the facts supported a finding of an “interference with privacy”, that is, a breach of the privacy principles, that had caused harm to the complainant. She’d tried to reach a settlement, but the parties were too far apart.

Over the past few months, I have visited over 40 government agencies to talk about privacy. In many cases I’ve been impressed by the depth of knowledge that exists across the sector on this topic, although there is still much work to be done.

"I do not believe it makes sense to say that [Excel spreadsheets]* are inherently evil. In certain circumstances, they can play a positive role-as they have in the past. But clearly they have a power to do great harm." Des Browne, UK Defence Minister.