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The European Commission (EC) is concerned about the way the UK has implemented the provisions for protecting personal data, according to information revealed by out-law.com following freedom of information requests.
An investigation has been initiated by the EC three years ago regarding the way the UK legislation has implemented 11 articles of the 34-article European data protection directive. This investigation has been kept secret by the UK authorities, that have concluded through the Ministry of Justice that UK "has implemented the Directive fully."
Dr. Chris Pounder of Pinsent Masons explained the wrong interpretation of the authorities: "All UK Governments involved in implementing the Directive have had a policy of minimising the Data Protection Directive's effect. The number of problems raised by the Commission seem to indicate that the UK Government may have misjudged the situation and minimised the effect of too many obligations".
The situation could be more complicated after the implementation of the Data retention directive through a new law that came into force on 1 October 2007. This UK law will oblige the electronic communications companies to keep a one-year log of certain communication data such as: the number from which a call is made, the customer's name and address, any number dialled, the date and time of a call or the geographic location data for mobile calls.
The UK data retention law will not apply to the content of communication or to the Internet data, but the latter will probably be included by 15 March 2009 - the limit day in the European directive.
The information commissioner, Richard Thomas, will have the obligation, under the new law to monitor the security of the data kept according to the new data retention provisions. However, the lack of strong powers of the information commissioner is one of the key concerns the European Commission has addressed in its investigation on the UK data protection legislation.
Europe's concern over UK data protection 'defects' revealed (1.10.2007)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/story/0,,2180823,00.html
Europe claims UK botched one third of Data Protection Directive (17.09.2007)
http://www.out-law.com/page-8472
Data retention law makes little difference to telcos, says trade body
(1.10.2007)
http://www.out-law.com/page-8513
EDRI-gram: Data retention for one year for UK telecom companies (1.08.2007)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.15/data-retention-UK