"Clearly, the data protection issue needs to be dealt with, because ICO cannot be unfunded, but I doubt that there will be a significant increase in the FOI budget," Room said.
By mid-November, I had practically given up when an email from the ICO dropped into my inbox.
Eleven months later, the ICO unequivocally ruled in my favour, stating that there was a "very strong" public interest in the information's disclosure and ordered the DfE to comply within 35 days.
The data protection barrister and solicitor Stewart Room said this was an "obvious place to start" for providing the ICO with more resources.
"The ICO will start to get pulled into domestic property disputes".
Umunna said: "Very serious allegations have been raised, including by a serving ICO official who is himself a former police officer, that information contained on blacklist files came from police and security services.
Watchdogs from across Europe complained to the company, with the head of the UK's ICO saying that the new policy presented "serious questions" about compliance with the UK Data Protection Act.
He denied that the ICO was already swamped but acknowledged that thousands of requests had been made since the ECJ judgment, the result of which, he said, had been "unexpected".
Changes to European data protection law would cut off the money it receives from registration – all companies handling data in the UK have to pay a fee to the ICO.
In his foreword to the report, Graham said the ICO should be given a "guarantee of independence that comes from a more formal relationship with parliament than is the case at present".
Kathryn Wynn, senior associate at Pinsent Masons, said the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) had always taken the view that a camera on someone's house was outside of the law.
