On Wed, 24 Dec 2003 22:44:49 +0100, martin wrote:

On Wed, 24 Dec 2003 21:35:51 +0000, Kay Easton
wrote:

In article , Peter Crosland
writes
If anyone
wants to go deeper into it, I suggest that you contact the Data Protection
Department of your local Council and in view of the recent publicity,
stand
by for confussion :-((

I am not sure if you are joking here but in my experience public bodies
frequently cite the DPA as an excuse for all sorts of things without having
any real understanding of the rules.

As we've seen only too clearly in the last couple of weeks, with first
Soham and then British gas.

DPA was used as a very poor excuse for police incompetence in the
Humberside Police Force. It was quite clear that the DPA does not
apply in this case.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/leade...111338,00.html
"The singularity of the Soham killings should militate against
kneejerk solutions, undertaken in the wish that such a crime should
never happen again. Even so, the need for reform is urgent. The lapses
that allowed the nine accusations of rape or sexual assault - five of
them involving underage girls, one as young as 11 - to disappear from
Ian Huntley's record were due not to a loophole in the law but a
failure in its application. Contrary to the claim by the Chief
Constable of Humberside, the 1984 Data Protection Act does not oblige
the deletion of untested charges."
--
Martin