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Information Commissioner Updates Guidance On Personal Data The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has published new guidance explaining its view of what counts as personal data under the Data Protection Act (DPA). Information that is not personal data today may become personal data as technology advances. A landmark ruling in 2003 challenged long-held assumptions about what constituted personal data. Michael Durant's case against the Financial Services Authority resulted in the courts defining personal data very narrowly, so that data became personal only in certain circumstances. While only a court can rule on what the definition in the DPA really means, guidance from the ICO is influential. The ICO has now replaced its initial guidance on the implications of the Durant judgment. "We have been aware for some time of the need to replace our guidance on the implications of the Durant judgment," says an ICO statement:
The DPA defines personal data as "data which relate to a living individual who can be identified:
It is the interpretation of that definition that is the subject of the ICO guidance. Knowing what is and what is not personal data is vital because the DPA's rules apply only to the processing of personal data. The ICO says in its new guidance that many kinds of information can count as personal data, even in situations in which people may not consider it to be so. It says, for example, that information could count as personal data even if it does not include a person's name:
The ICO says that it is important to bear in mind that a person trying to identify another person might work quite hard to identify that person. Definitions of personal data, then, must be allowed to be quite wide in some cases:
The ICO also says that a decision must be revised on occasion, and it must not be assumed that any decision on personal data is final:
The situation is complicated further by the fact that some information can count as personal data in one person's hands, but not in another's. The guidance gives the example of two near-identical photographs of a street party, one taken by a policeman, the other by a journalist:
It also says that parts of documents can count as personal data without the whole document counting as such. In the case involving Michael Durant he sought information held on him by the Financial Services Authority. The Court of Appeal ruled that just because a document contained his name it was not necessarily defined as personal data. This changed the perception of how wide a definition of personal data could be. A more recent case turned on the issue of personal data. A researcher at the Scottish Parliament requested figures about childhood leukaemia in a defined area and was turned down because the information was seen as personal data. The House of Lords has been asked to clarify whether or not the information, which will not name any children, can count as personal data. The ICO says that it will issue guidance on the meaning of "relevant filing system" – another key part of the Durant case – in the near future. Source: Workplace Law Network Information Commisioner Guidance (pdf) Information Commissioner Website
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