Data Protection Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Data Protection - Essay Example For example, it is because of the emergence of a 'borderless' society that law enforcement agencies increasingly seek to be exempted from the full rigors of the privacy laws. That this kind of exemption can lead, in turn, to misuse and abuse of these powers is perhaps one of the 'costs' we have to bear if law enforcement agencies generally are to be effective in combating crime in the information age. However, before evaluating how ethically right is the State's intervention in the privacy of the members of the society for its proposed public interests, the very terminology of "Privacy" needs to be understood. Extensive material in literature on the definition of Privacy reveals that the term's meaning differs under various approaches to privacy offered by different scholars. Privacy's most widely spread definition has been coined by Warren & Brandeis (1890, p. 205) who define privacy, as an intrinsic value, the "right to be let alone" (Stahl, 2007). Another approach to define privacy by (Stalder, 2002) is that of informational self-determination which sees privacy as the right to determine who accesses person-related data. This interpretation is widely spread in continental Europe whereby privacy may be taken in terms of property which includes the protection of an individual's financial records, health records, ex-directory telephone numbers, criminal records, etc. If person-related information can be treated as property, then privacy issues can be reduced to the more established (intellectual) property law as Spinello (2000) puts it. As an instrumental value, privacy has been described as an important aspect of humans where a truly private space is necessary for mental health (Nissenbaum, 2001), is required to trust others and, more generally, to develop good social relations (Gallivan. & Depledge, 2003; Johnson, 2001).A functioning society thus requires the provision of privacy for its members (Introna, 2000) and that applies to data both computerized and on paper records of its members. The UK legislature's stance on their privacy policy brought about the Data protection Act in 1998 which supersedes the earlier Act of 1984, which aimed to implement Council Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data. Essentially, any person or organization (the data controller) collecting and processing personal data (that is, data which relate to a living individual who can be identified from those data, and includes any expression of opinion about the individual) must register with the Information Commissioner, and must specify various items of information about the data collected and the uses to which the data will be put (Harris 2006, p. 124).The DPA's purpose was to create universal European standards for the collection, storage and processing of personal information. It allowed certain individuals to know what information about them is being held. If enough members of these groups applied their rights they might be able to amass sufficient information to