On Tue, May 30, 2006 at 03:56:37PM +0100, Donald Henderson wrote:
> FOI gives an absolute right of access to information, and the exercise
> of that right by an individual should not in turn cause them harm
> because of the way we choose to process their personal information.
Indeed. I'm struggling to think of a case where the response to an FOI
request should differ depending on who sent it (other than trivial
cases where you could substitute words like "me" with the person's
name). In general an FOI request is a request that the government release
information to the public. They often choose to do this by releasing
solely to the person who sent the request (which personally I think is a
bad habit that most authorities should do their best to avoid), but the
person who actually makes the request should be irrelevant. (Thus the
"no such thing as a vexatious requestor - just a vexatious request"
principle). I am aware of no reason, for example, why someone cannot
act as a "proxy" for someone else in making a request. I've certainly
made requests based on conversations with people who say "I'd love to
find out X" but can't be convinced that they should really make a
request themselves.
This, of course, is the opposite to what we're used to with Data
Protection.
Tony
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