WRITTEN ON December 12th, 2007 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, What do we want?
Hurrah – the Information Commissioner has launched privacy impact assessments (I wonder why? And does this make perm secs such as Sir Bonar and Sir Wally happy?). You need one if the answer is yes to any of these questions:
(1) Does the project apply new or additional information technologies that have substantial potential for privacy intrusion? Examples include, but are not limited to, smart cards, RFID tags, biometrics, locator technologies (including mobile phone location, applications of GPS and intelligent transportation systems), visual surveillance, digital image and video recording, profiling, data mining, and logging of electronic traffic.
(2) Does the project involve new identifiers, re-use of existing identifiers, or intrusive identification, identity authentication or identity management processes?
(3) Might the project have the effect of denying anonymity and pseudonymity, or converting transactions that could previously be conducted anonymously or pseudonymously into identified transactions?
(4) Does the project involve multiple organisations, whether they are government agencies (e.g. in ‘joined-up government’ initiatives) or private-sector organisations (e.g. as outsourced service providers or as ‘business partners’ )?
(5) Does the project involve new or significantly changed handling of personal data that is of particular concern to individuals?
(6) Does the project involve new or significantly changed handling of a considerable amount of personal data about each individual in the database?
(7) Does the project involve new or significantly changed handling of personal data about a large number of individuals?
(8) Does the project involve new or significantly changed consolidation, inter-linking, cross-referencing or matching of personal data from multiple sources?…This is an especially important factor. Issues arise in relation to data quality, the diverse meanings of superficially similar data-items, and the retention of data beyond the very short term.
(9) Does the project relate to data processing which is in any way exempt from legislative privacy protections?…Examples include law enforcement and national security information systems and also other schemes where some or all of the privacy protections have been negated by legislative exemptions or exceptions.
(10) Does the project’s justification include significant contributions to public security measures?…Measures to address concerns about critical infrastructure and the physical safety of the population usually have a substantial impact on privacy. Yet there have been tendencies in recent years not to give privacy its due weight. This has resulted in tensions with privacy interests, and creates the risk of public opposition and non-adoption of the programme or scheme.
(11) Does the project involve systematic disclosure of personal data to, or access by, third parties that are not subject to comparable privacy regulation?
I wonder if the Identity System meets these criteria? And ContactPoint/eCAF? And Connecting for Health? And eBorders? And the Scottish bus pass scheme for the elderly, indeed all ITSO systems? And Oystercard on Barclaycards and mobile phones? Go Info-Commissioner! Time for everyone to buy shares in the Enterprise Privacy Group, if Toby’s offering any.
Update: And this from TheyWorkforYou
Mr. Mackay: The Information Commissioner has said that he should have powers to carry out spot checks in Government Departments and other bodies to ensure that they comply with data protection legislation. Does the Minister agree with Richard Thomas?
Mr. Wills: Yes, we do. We are implementing that, and giving Richard Thomas the powers.
* cheers Martin at FIPR
2 Responses to “Privacy impact assemssments are Go!”
Yes, PIA’s in some form of common framework have to be a good thing – but they only address future projects; not the quagmire that is already in place.
There is another type of assessment that I think should also be put in place – one that is driven by the individual – see http://www.thetrustindex.com for early work in that space.
Building on that mind-set:
• WIBBI if the organisation signed the individual’s privacy policy rather than the other way around? And that the individual had access to a small number of creative commons type licences approaches they could choose from when sharing personal data.
• WIBBI if the individual did not have to provide data without knowing what it would be used for?
• WIBBI if privacy policies were built using easily understood icons rather than legal jargon designed to be vague or confusing?
• WIBBI if those privacy policies were machine-readable so that individuals could choose to not be exposed to organisations/ services that did not conform to their preferences?
That’s what Project VRM and others with the same mind-set are working on. The sooner they deliver the better!!!!!
Mr Wills may be refering to the fact that government have ordered government departments to cooperate with the Information Commissioner and allow him to do inspections. When he last talked about it the Information Commissioner said the government was resisting giving him the power to force them to cooperate, currently its based on good will.
If they decided to give those powers to the the Commissioner it would be great.