1 3 April 2004

News:

The Indian Department of Information Technology (DIT) is working with the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASS-Com) to develop a Data Protection Act.

The Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) plans to implement the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) risk turning into a shambles according to public sector data protection managers.

Human rights and civil liberties campaigners have joined forces to attack International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) plans for biometric and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips to be placed in passports.

Features:

I am told that this third issue of Data Protection Law & Policy is a critical one. In the lifespan of a legal journal, making it to issue number three is a sign of certain maturity. Getting good quality contributions rolling on a monthly basis is not a simple task and being able to do it more than twice shows that there are good prospects ahead. In other words, if the journal is still alive after this issue, we will be pretty confident that there is a future for it.

The acquisition of personal data is a crucial challenge for businesses. The ability to market, cross sell and promote a company’s products and services requires a powerful database. Yet without the consumer’s consent to use such data for such purposes, the personal data is worthless. This article looks at some of the different ways in which the issue of data subjects’ consent arises in a commercial context and how such consent may be gained sufficiently to comply with UK law.

On 27 February the European Data Protection Working Party adopted its opinion 5/2004 on unsolicited communications for marketing purposes under Article 13 of Directive 2002/58/EC (“the Opinion”). This article examines this guidance.

SMS marketing and services, with over 20 billion text messages sent in the UK last year, has become a substantial and growing business sector. This article looks at recent developments in the regulation of the SMS market.

Data protection compliance in a major financial services group with retail banking at its core means a huge and varied workload for the compliance managers who look at policies, systems, and processes across an increasing range of activities. In this article I will be concentrating on how we organise for compliance from the UK perspective in the Lloyds TSB group and some data protection issues that are common across the retail banking industry.

Preparing to deal with a disaster, either natural or man-made, is unfortunately a matter of growing importance for both private companies and public institutions. Yet many organisations remain unaware both of their legal obligations and of the practical steps that they should be taking. This article looks at how to prepare for the worst.