The Data Protection Act 1998 - questions and answers

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The Data Protection Act 1998

The Data Protection Act 1998 is a security issue. The seventh Data Protection Principle requires adequate security measures to protect personal data; while the eighth Principle prohibits the export of such data to countries outside of the EU that do not have an adequate level of data protection for data subjects (at the moment, this includes the USA). And on top of this, individual company directors can be held liable. Nevertheless, the new Data Protection Act is still little understood - so we asked Elaine McKinney, a solicitor with MacRoberts, to give us an overall picture of this new law.

Why do we need a Data Protection law?

Due to the explosion in use of computers concerns were expressed that information was being processed about individuals without their knowledge and without the ability to have access to that information or correct it if it was wrong. The Data Protection law attempts to maintain a balance between the rights of individuals and the ability of others to process information about them.

What is the law in the UK?

The Data Protection Act 1984 will soon be