Others may be better placed to comment, but I would say Yes and Yes.
1) Just because something is in the public domain, that
has no bearing on whether it is personal data or not. So "this person has
written this about such and such a topic" looks to me like personal data.
The fact that it is in the public domain may mean that there are fewer issues
around making use of it, but the eight Principles still have to be complied
with.
2) Opinions about people are explicitly capable of being
personal data.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2014 12:02
PM
Subject: Clarification over what
constitutes personal data for SAR
Dear Colleagues,
I would be most grateful for some guidance around
whether:
1) an email / memo from a member of staff, which draws
attention to a blog post / newspaper article / twitter posting / other
publicly accessible information written by a Data Subject, would be classified
as the personal data of that Data Subject and whether the email / memo from
the third party would be releasable under a SAR?
2) If a comment about the Data Subject was included within
the email / memo would that then be classified as personal data and releasable
under a SAR?
Many thanks for any clarification provided.
Kind regards.
Jason
---------------------------------------------
Jason
Harrison
Governance
Officer
Office of
Governance and Secretariat
Sussex House
325
email: [log in to unmask]
tel: 01273
87-2795
NOTE: This email
message and any attachments are for the sole use of
the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential
and/or
privileged information. Any unauthorised review, use,
disclosure or
distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended
recipient,
please contact the sender by replying to this email, and
destroy all
copies of the original message.
All archives of messages are stored permanently and are
available to the world wide web community at large at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/data-protection.html
Selected commands (the command has been filled in below in the body of the
email if you are receiving emails in HTML format):
All user commands can be found at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/help/commandref.htm
and are sent in the body of an otherwise blank email to [log in to unmask]
Any queries about sending or receiving messages please send to the list
owner [log in to unmask]
(Please send all commands to [log in to unmask] not the list
or the moderators, and all requests for technical help to [log in to unmask], the general
office helpline)
Selected commands (the command has been filled in below in the body of the email if you are receiving emails in HTML format):
