The Data Protection Act 1998 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 itself does not mention privacy, it was enacted to bring UK law into line with the EU data protection directive of 1995 which required Member States to protect people's fundamental rights and freedoms and in particular their right to privacy with respect to the processing of personal data. In practice it provides a way for individuals to 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. It also requires companies and individuals to keep personal information to themselves.
Read more about Data Protection Act 1998: History, Personal Data, Subject Rights, Data Protection Principles, Exceptions, Offences, Complexity, Regulation
Famous quotes containing the words data, protection and/or act:
“To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it—all my life.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“No: until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant Southern port, where my liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“quaking muscles in the act of birth,
Between her legs a pigmy face appear,
And the first murderer lay upon the earth.”
—Alec Derwent Hope (b. 1907)