Exemptions

The rights provided by the DPA are not absolute. The DPA provides for a number of exceptions which exclude certain types of information, or information held for certain purposes.

The main impact of the exceptions is on your right to access information held about you. For information on this you should see the section on Right to Know. However, the some exceptions also affect the duties of data controllers in the way they process the data, and affect your other rights in respect of those data.

National Security

This exception can be claimed by any body, not just the security services, and it covers any personal data where the exception is required for the purposes of national security. A Ministerial certificate confirming that the exception is required is conclusive evidence that the exception applies.
The exception covers all the individual rights in relation to the data, including right of access, right to have the date corrected and right to compensation, in covers the requirement to notify the Commissioner and it covers the Commissioner’s enforcement powers.

Personal, family or household data

Information held by an individual and concerned only with the management of his personal, family or household affairs, or held for recreational purposes, is exempt from the requirement to comply with the Data Protection principles, with the requirement to notify the Commissioner. In addition all your individual rights under the DPA in relation to that data are excluded.

So if you have a list of the birthdays of your friends and family on your home computer, although this may be considered personal data about them, it will be exempt from the DPA. Similarly, if your neighbour has a CCTV camera for domestic security purposes, and this captures personal data about you and your family, again it is likely to not be covered by the DPA, as it will be considered information concerned only with the management of his household affairs

Information held for journalistic, artistic or literary purposes

Information falls under this exception if:

• it is held for journalistic, artistic or literary purposes
• it is held with a view to publication;
  
• Publication would be in the public interest; and
  
• Requiring the data to be subject to the particular provisions of the DPA would be incompatible with the purposes for which the data are held.
  

As the above shows, this exception is not absolute, but if the exception applies it is very powerful, as it excludes all the individual rights and all the data protection principles (except the Seventh Data Protection Principle, which requires data to be kept secure), and it may even override the rules restricting the use of sensitive personal data.

So a journalist may be entitled to hold personal data about a politician without complying with the First Data Protection principle, if he holds those data with a view to publication, publication would be in the public interest and complying with the First Data Protection principle would be incompatible with the journalistic purposes.