The Data Protection Act
The Data Protection Act (1998) came into force on 1st March 2000. It
sets rules for processing personal information and applies to paper
records as well as those held on computers. It was brought out because
computers were getting more powerful and easy to use. Companies,
government and other organisations began to use them to store large
amounts of information about people, such as their customers, clients
and staff details. Databases with this information can be quickly set
up, searched, edited and accessed and take up less space than paper
records. So company’s send peoples personal data to one company to the
other so that were a danger in case someone tries to access some ones
personal details with out permission.
The Data Protection Act has 8 principles they are;
1) It must be collected and used fairly with in the law
2) It must only be held and used for the reasons given to the
Information Commissioner
3) It can only be used for those registered purposes and only be
disclosed to those people mentioned in the register entry. You cannot
give it away or sell it unless you said you would on the form
4) The information held must be adequate (enough), relevant and not
excessive (too much) when compared with the purpose stated in the
register. So you must have enough detail but not too much for the job
that you are doing with the data.
5) It must be accurate and be kept up to date. There is a duty to keep
it up to date, for example to change an address when you move.
6) It must not be kept longer than is necessary for the registered
purpose. It is all right to keep information for certain l...
... middle of paper ...
...ng the economic well being of the UK’’. If they do
this, the employee(s) the interception warrant is served to must
comply with it or face up to 2 years in jail locked up. They must
NEVER tell anyone about it either or face up to five years in jail
locked up. The government could demand all the data that flows to and
from your Internet account checked with you never knowing about it.
From my point of view I think that this is a bad Act because the Act
requires of any employee of a company to provide a public
telecommunications service which they have to then obey interception
warrants weather they like it or not, but if they disobey the Act they
will then have to face up to 2 years In jail locked up. This Act is
working well as far as I know because all companies/organisations are
cooperating with this Act perfectly.