How privacy is protected under the law

Anne Lenoir

This is the 21st century, and although, modern technology has made the access to individuals’ private affairs alarmingly easy ( CCTV, NIR, verichip, RFID, Databases etc…), there is still not a single law on privacy. Apart form article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998, there is no other way to protect privacy than to rely on mere codes of practice. Controversial attempts have been made through the protection of personal data ( Data Protection Act 1984,1998) to protect privacy. However, such attempts have only succeeded in legalising even more intrusion in people’s private lives with the help of data collection and processing. Data collection is by far the must dangerous and intrusive device without which no monitoring and/or abuse would be made possible. The ID card & database scheme, if introduced, will be a dangerous additional means of monitoring individuals that would change the relationship between citizens and their governments forever.

The Data Protection Act 1998 has made a mockery of the principles of fairness and security. It is biased, misleading, unreliable and there are far too many exemptions for safety. The aim of this act was not to protect data, but to legalise data collection regardless of whether such a collection of data is justified at all and as we all know it is not. What is more, its 8 principles are inconsistent and incompatible with our fundamental right to privacy, which make this act unreliable and counter-productive.
This act is biased as it only safeguards the interests of data controllers/users whatever the consequences (economic loss, ID theft, abuse etc…). It allows them to collect and process an unnecessary amount of personal data, even though they could easily be substituted. This is not only intrusive, it is giving a right to private and public bodies over our entire life and a means to fraudsters to steal it.

Consequently, data subjects are left with almost no protections. They are compelled to reveal, that they like it or not, unnecessary personal informations which are later processed ( filed, used, copied, disclosed etc…). Furthermore, they have no idea as to the amount of their personal data being processed, what kind of informations are being held about them, the number of people accessing them, or even with whom such data are shared in the UK and abroad ( Brussels, India etc…). Appallingly, trying to find this out or seek redress, it is both time-consuming and expensive. And as if this was not bad enough, there is not a single section on ID theft or on how to prevent it.

The Privacy and Data Protection Act 2007 (P&DPA07) is mainly concerned with the danger of data collection, processing and the monitoring of people which violate our fundamental right to privacy. It is also concerned with the inefficiency of protecting data from abuse once they have been collected.
Many would argue that data are needed for the well-being of modern societies. But so far, they have done more harm than good, and as we know data do not have to be collected to achieve this goal.

By failing to ask itself the right questions, the government has failed to realise that data collection and processing are responsible for the problems faced by most modern societies today. The facts remains that data are being used to commit organised crime (terrorism, ID theft, benefit fraud, forgery, sell of data, blackmail etc..), malpractice (discrimination, exclusion etc…) and abuse ( undue control, manipulation etc…), and this is not surprising considering the excessive amount of data being collected and processed everywhere.

Now a new threat has emerged, the threat of a ’surveillance state’ where people live in fear of their government and police force. The profiling and monitoring of each and every individual are turning our democratic society into a police state in which the entire population is under, what could be called, a “country arrest order” for being potential criminals. Such practices, frighteningly enough, were only used by dictators ( Stalin, Hitler etc…), and therefore, have no place in our democratic societies. It is obvious to that this system is counter-productive.

What the government ought to have done was to – (a) determine the exact purposes of data collection ( accuracy of informations etc…), and (b) determine the exact set of data needed for a fully functional society ( income, properties, dependants, health, education).

The Data Protection Act 1998 uses painful and ineffective methods of protecting data, preserving privacy, and of preventing organised crime, abuse, malpractice, problems which it has caused. Have we not be compelled to reveal irrelevant personal informations they could not be used against us, and we would all be treated equally.
There is a easier, fairer and more reliable alternative to data collection. It is simply to use technology (ultraviolet lights, x-rays), handwriting, data substitutes, confidential registers, pseudo-names and anonymous reports to ensure privacy.

All professionals will have to do is check all required documents,compare data subjects ‘ handwritings and signatures with the ones on their documents, give a pseudo-name to each of their patients, clients or customers, and keep online anonymous reports on each of them. This will preserve data subjects’ privacy and civil liberties without prejudicing other professionals ‘ need to access information for research, studies, statistical or administrative purposes. All these reforms can be found in the P&DPA07 proposal.

It is clear that the disadvantages of data collection far outweigh the alleged benefits. A system like ours lacks adequate safeguards for the protection of data and civil liberties. What is even more worrying, is that such a system is turning our democratic society into a dictatorship, in which oppression and control are its norms and values. We are in an urgent need of the new unbiased Privacy and Data Protection Act 2007, to end the evils of the 21st century, and the resurgence of the evils of the past.

Continue…