In strict post-Durant terms, the information you were asking for from the
Council, by your own definition below, does not seem to be "personal data"
(i.e. about you). As the Court in Durant said, when determining whether
data is personal data, data controllers should have regard to:
"whether the information is biographical in a significant sense that is,
going beyond the recording of [the individual's] involvement in a matter or
an event which has no personal connotations."
"The information should have the [individual] as its focus rather than some
other person with whom he may have been involved or some transaction or
event in which he may have figured or have had an interest."
As such the information about the rubbish collection at your block of flats
is probably not "about you" in the same way as the FSA's materials on Mr
Durant's case were not "about him", and the s.40 exemption would thus not
apply. In other words your assertion that you were an individual
requesting "information about him or herself" is by your own earlier
description, factually incorrect. You were more accurately an individual
who figured in, or had an interest in, some transaction or event (or by the
sound of things, possibly failed transaction or non-event) that was the
focus of the information.
In guidance terms, therefore, I would suggest that the statement is
acceptable as a statement of policy i.e. if the data requested is personal
data (i.e. "about him or herself"), the appropriate regime to handle it
under is that of the DPA 1998; if it is not personal data then the
appropriate regime is the FOIA 2000.
While I would be just about prepared to concede (it is Friday, after all)
that the quotation provided from the Legal Briefing Paper* might be
considered ambiguous when viewed in isolation, in the context of the rest
of the content of the webpage, including the discussion of Durant, it is
not.
Best wishes
Andrew
* In the interests of full disclosure, I suppose I should note, for those
who haven't read it, that I wrote the majority of the document in question.
--On 26 May 2006 11:57 +0100 Nick Landau <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> See http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/dataprotection/dataprotection.htm
>
> I query the statement in the Legal Briefing Paper that:
>
> "A request by an individual for information about him or herself is
> exempt under the FOIA 2000 and should be handled as a 'subject access
> request' under the DPA 1998."
>
> I have mentioned before that I requested all the papers held by my
> Council about the rubbish collection at my block of flats. As this was a
> case concerning myself and I wanted the emails/correspondence that
> mentioned me I specifically said that they should mention my name. I
> agree that this might have been unnecessary - but I wanted to focus the
> enquiry and the case mainly concerned myself.
>
> I therefore dispute that it might have been considered a DPA request. I
> wasn't asking for records on a database concerning myself - these were ad
> hoc emails - but in the terms of the statement above I was an individual
> requesting "information about him or herself".
>
> I would comment specifically about Simon's request that the requester has
> the right to change or at least comment on incorrect information.
>
> I would presume that where a 3rd party is mentioned that their name might
> be withheld (this is not my specialised area!) - as per the Freedom of
> Information Act - this does seem to be an area that might be helpfully
> clarified on the Information Commissioner's website.
>
> Nick Landau
Andrew Charlesworth
Senior Research Fellow in IT and Law
Director, Centre for IT and Law
School of Law/Department of Computer Science
University of Bristol
Wills Memorial Building
Queens Road, Bristol BS8 1RJ
Tel: 0117 954 5633 (CompSci)
Fax: 0117 954 5208 (CompSci)
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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