The Bill must be majorly revised in the course of its passage through parliament or revoked in order to protect the individual and collective privacy rights of the British public, safeguard the rule of law, and uphold key rights to equality and non-discrimination. [...] RECOMMENDATIONS We believe that the Bill should: • Remove the new definition of personal data in clause 1 to ensure that personal data is protected to at least as high of a standard as it is under the existing data protection framework; 5 • Remove the new concept of 'recognised legitimate interests' to prevent the Secretary of State from having the ability to pre-authorise data processing outside. [...] Changing the definition of personal data in this way allows more data to be processed with lower levels of protection, narrowing the scope of information safeguarded by data protection law and placing disproportionate power in the hands of the data controller. [...] The replacement of a stable, objective definition that gives rights to the individual in favour of an unstable, subjective definition that determines the rights an individual has over their data according to the capabilities of the processor is not only illogical, complex, and bad law-making – it is contrary to the premise of data protection law, which is about personal data rights. [...] Weakening both the definition of personal data and the purposes for which personal data can be processed is a double attack on the foundations of data protection in the UK, a major departure from existing UK and European data protection standards, and a serious and unjustified reduction of privacy rights in the UK.
- Pages
- 34
- Published in
- United Kingdom
