New Uk Data Protection Online 1st March 2000
Martin Burns
Member info
User since: 26 Apr 1999
Articles written: 143
After a lengthy delay of eighteen months, the UK's new Data Protection Act will come into force on 1st March next year. Building on the existing 1984 Act protecting personal data, the new Act will provide:
- Simplified registration for data users
- Enforcement against unregistered bodies
- A requirement to disclose what processing is undertaken
- Detailed requirements for security measures needed for data
- Enhanced rights for subject access
- Restrictions on movement of data outwith the European Union - it can only go to countries with an 'adequate' level of protection
A protocol for data exchange between the EU and US has yet to be agreed - this is expected to take a further 6 months to agree.
The Registrar has not extended the date for compliance for pre-existing databases - databases established before 24th October 1998 must comply by 24 October 2001.
More info from The Data Protection Registrar.
Martin Burns has been doing this stuff since Netscape 1.0 days. Starting with the communication ends that online media support, he moved back through design, HTML and server-side code. Then he got into running the whole show. These days he's working for these people as a Project Manager, and still thinks (nearly 6 years on) it's a hell of a lot better than working for a dot-com. In his Copious Free Time™, he helps out running a Cloth Nappies online store.
Amongst his favourite things is Zope
He's been a member of evolt.org since the very early days, a board member, a president, a writer and even contributed a modest amount of template code for the current site. Above all, he likes evolt.org to do things because it knowingly chooses to do so, rather than randomly stumbling into them. He's also one of the boys and girls who beervolts in the UK, although the arrival of small children in his life have knocked the frequency for 6.
Most likely to ask: Why would a client pay you to do that?
Least likely to ask: Why isn't that navigation frame in Flash?
