Indeed,  the US Embassy and most of the others are insisting on the PNC
convictions history and my understanding is that illegal or otherwise, when
the Basic Check is enabled via Part V of the Police Act, they (the US) have
stated that they will still require to see it - so individuals will be asked
to 'volunteer' the information - Interesting position for DPO's at that time
!!!

Furthermore I have seen correspondence from the ICO which states :

"The result of a police subject access request is commonly accepted for this
purposes by low-risk employers who are presently unable to use CRB
procedures and by overseas visa granting and immigration authorities."

With the greatest of respect to Ian B, this does not exactly constitute
'discouraging' it - more like acceptance (their word) in my view.  The
simple fact is - it is not unlawful -  although..... whilst I can understand
the need for vetting, I have reported employers in the past to the ICO
because of my concern that the PNC disclosure shows both 'spent' and
'unspent' cautions and convictions and are I would suggest being taken into
consideration when deciding whether or not to employ.  I view this as at
least a breach of the third principle in that as far as spent convictions
are concerned there is a potential contravention of the Rehabilitation of
Offenders Act.  (This issue applies to the embassies as well re emigration)
To date I have received no reply - fine.

There is no target date for the "Basic Check".

Peter Lane





-----Original Message-----
From: This list is for those interested in Data Protection issues
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Roland Perry
Sent: 16 September 2004 20:36
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Enforced Subject Access


In message <006f01c467f3$b7cb14b0$403468d5@com>, at 10:36:11 on Mon, 12
Jul 2004, Ian Welton <[log in to unmask]> writes
>Is anybody aware if the volume of enforced Subject Access Requests in the
>Policing sectors, (where the data subject was being coerced into requesting
>information which may be held about them), has reduced since the
>implementation of the Criminal Records Bureau?

In matters I deal with, if anything, the hoopla over the CRB has brought
to people's attention that in order to be duly diligent they should make
much better enquiries about their staff. And if they are an organisation
that's not entitled to CRB checks, they fall back on what they perceive
as the next best thing: PNC SARs.

The US Embassy is still using PNC SARs as a way to vet visa applicants,
as far as I know. And we, as a country, recently narrowly escaped every
tourist heading for the USA needing a visa from October (in the absence
of biometric passports)...

>Have any other UK sectors identified any cases of coercion being applied to
>data subjects as a means of identifying what data may be held?

--
Roland Perry

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