Data Protection

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Information privacy, or data privacy or data protection is the relationship between collection and dissemination of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, and the legal and political issues surrounding them.

Privacy concerns exist wherever personally identifiable information is collected and stored - in digital form or otherwise. Improper or non-existent disclosure control can be the root cause for privacy issues. Data protection issues can arise in response to information from a wide range of sources, such as:

• Healthcare records
• Criminal justice investigations and proceedings
• Financial institutions and transactions
• Biological traits, such as genetic material
• Residence and geographic records
• Ethnicity

The challenge in data protection is to share data while protecting personally identifiable information. The fields of data security and information security design and utilize software, hardware and human resources to address this issue.

Information types

Various types of personal information often come under privacy concerns.

Lifestyle privacy

For various reasons, individuals may not wish personal information such as their religion, sexual orientation, political affiliations, or personal activities to be revealed. This may be to avoid discrimination, personal embarrassment, or damage to one's professional reputation.

Financial privacy

Information about a person's financial transactions, including the amount of assets, positions held in stocks or funds, outstanding debts, and purchases can be sensitive. If criminals gain access to information such as a person's accounts or credit card numbers, that person could become the victim of fraud or identity theft. Information about a person's purchases can reveal a great deal about that person's history, such as places he/she has visited, whom he/she has contacted with, products he/she has used, his/her activities and habits, or medications he/she has used. In some cases corporations might wish to use this information to target individuals with marketing customized towards those individual's personal preferences, something which that person may or may not approve of.

Internet privacy

The ability to control what information one reveals about oneself over the Internet, and who can access that information, has become a growing concern. These concerns include whether email can be stored or read by third parties without consent, or whether third parties can track the web sites someone has visited. Another concern is whether web sites which are visited collect, store, and possibly share personally identifiable information about users.

The advent of various search engines and the use of data mining created a capability for data about individuals to be collected and combined from a wide variety of sources very easily. The FTC has provided a set of guidelines that represent widely-accepted concepts concerning fair information practices in an electronic marketplace called the Fair Information Practice Principles.

Information privacy law

Information privacy laws cover the protection of information on private individuals from intentional or unintentional disclosure or misuse. The European Directive on Protection of Personal Data, released on July 25, 1995 was an attempt to unify the laws on data protection within the European Community. As a result, customers of international organizations such as Amazon and eBay in the EU have the ability to review and delete information, while Americans do not. In the United States the equivalent guiding philosophy is the Code of Fair Information Practice (FIP). This was developed by the Office of Technology Assessment in response to concerns about the potential for electronic surveillance.

The difference in language here is important: in the United States the debate is about privacy where in the European Community the debate is on data protection. Moving the debate from privacy to data protection is seen by some philosophers as a mechanism for moving forward in the practical realm while not requiring agreement on fundamental questions about the nature of privacy.

The basic principles of data protection in the EU are:

    * For all data collected there should be a stated purpose
    * Information collected by an individual cannot be disclosed to other organizations of individuals unless authorized by law or by consent of the individual.
    * Records kept on an individual should be accurate and up to date.
    * There should be mechanisms for individuals to review data about them, to ensure accuracy. This may include periodic reporting.
    * Data should be deleted when it is no longer needed for the stated purpose.
    * Transmission of personal information to locations where "equivalent" personal data protection cannot be assured is prohibited.
    * Some data is too sensitive to be collected, unless there are extreme circumstances (e.g., sexual orientation, religion)

Despite the data protection requirements European national ID schemes include data coding standards with religion as a defined (but unused in the EU except in Greece) field.

Because of this, in theory the transfer of personal information from the EU to the US is prohibited when equivalent privacy protection is not in place in the US. In practice, data is transmitted from the EU to the US, India and other data havens. What is required is that the non-EU organization has a data protection or privacy policy. American companies that would work with EU data must comply with the Safe Harbour framework. The core principles of data protected are limited collection, consent of the subject, accuracy, integrity, security, subject right of review and deletion.

Medical privacy

A person may not wish for their medical records to be revealed to others. This may be because they have concern that it might affect their insurance coverage’s or employment. Or it may be because they would not wish for others to know about medical or psychological conditions or treatments which would be embarrassing. Revealing medical data could also reveal other details about one's personal life (such as about one's sexual activity for example).

Physicians and psychiatrists in many cultures and countries have standards for doctor-patient relationships which include maintaining confidentiality. In some cases the physician-patient privilege is legally protected. These practices are in place to protect the dignity of patients, and to ensure that patients will feel free to reveal complete and accurate information required for them to receive the correct treatment.

Political privacy

Political privacy has been a concern since voting systems emerged in ancient times. The secret ballot is the simplest and most widespread measure to ensure that political views are not known to anyone other than the voter themself--it is nearly universal in modern democracy, and considered to be a basic right of citizenship. In fact even where other rights of privacy do not exist, this type of privacy very often does.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom the Data Protection Act 1984 was repealed by the Data Protection Act 1998 (Information Commissioner). Due to changes in the law, employers must inform staff in advance if they plan to monitor their emails, phone calls and Internet use. The Home Office has published a consultation paper detailing whom it believes should have access to private data and for how long. This proposal goes beyond the current access to such information by MI5, MI6, GCHQ, and HM Revenue and Customs. The new proposals would extend the number of agencies that can access this communications data to include other agencies with crime-fighting roles.

The Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) is a United Kingdom Act of Parliament which defines UK law on the processing of data on identifiable living people. It is the main piece of legislation that governs the protection of personal data in the UK. Although the Act does not mention privacy, in practice it provides a way in which individuals can control information about themselves. Most of the Act does not apply to domestic use, for example keeping a personal address book. Anyone holding personal data for other purposes is legally obliged to comply with this Act, subject to some exemptions. The Act defines eight data protection principles.

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