Section 8.2
8 Legal Issues And Data Security
8.2 The Data Protection Act 1984
In the early eighties increasing public pressure and the possibility of lost European
trade lead to the Data Protection Act being passed.
The act regulates the use of "automatically processed information relating to
individuals and the provision of services in respect of such information".
The act defined:
- Data
- Information in processable form.
- Personal Data
- Data relating to identifiable, living, individuals.
- Data Subject
- The individual concerned.
Principles Of The Act
The Data Protection Act contains eight principles.
- Personal data, held for processing, must be obtained fairly for a
lawful purpose.
- Such data must be held for a specific purpose.
- Personal data must only be used for the specific purpose and may only
be disclosed in accordance with the specific purpose.
- Personal data must not be excessive for the purpose but merely
adequate and relevant.
- Personal data must be made avaliable to the individual concerned and
provision made for corrections.
- The personal data must be held securely against unauthorised access or
loss.
The Data Protection Registrar
The act established the office of Registrar who is responsible for maintaining
an organisation's public register of Data Users (those people who collect and
process personal data).
Exemptions From The Act
Personal data held for payroll, pensions, and accounts data is exempt; as are
names and addresses for the purposes of distributing information (e.g. mail
merge).
Also, personal data held in connections with national security, crime
prevention, or for the collection of tax or duty.
If personal data is collected for statistical or research purposes only, or is
held simply for backup then data subjects do not have the right to see such
data.
Although personal data must be kept secure, it can be disclosed to the data
subject's agent (e.g. lawyer or accountant), to a person working for the data user
and to anyone if there is an urgent need to prevent injury or damage to health.
