Further written evidence submitted by
the Information Commissioner's Office
I refer to your letter of 27 July 2009 and must
start by offering you an apology. When my Deputy Commissioner
wrote to Elizabeth Bradshaw on 17 July 2009 he confirmed that
we had not disclosed to the press any of the invoices and ledgers
seized during the Operation Motorman investigation. This was his
genuine belief at the time but it turns out that it was mistaken.
We have now discovered that our press office passed limited and
heavily redacted extracts to a journalist at the Guardian over
two years ago. These were disclosed to help illustrate the Guardian's
coverage of our report "What price privacy now? "
It seems likely that these extracts are the same documents that
have been provided to your Committee by a witness.
Your request for me to provide the Committee with
the full ledgers and invoices places me in some difficulty. You
will recall that none of this material refers to telephone tapping,
but rather relates to the "blagging" of personal information.
I nevertheless want to be as cooperative as I can be and I recognise
your Committee's power to require the production of papers. I
am though faced with Section 59 of the Data Protection Act 1998
(The Act). This makes it a criminal offence for me or any member
of my staff to disclose any information that we have obtained
for the purposes of the Act and which relates to an identifiable
individual. The only exception is where the disclosure is made
with lawful authority. A disclosure is made with lawful authority
if, amongst other possibilities, the disclosure is necessary in
the public interest, having regard to the rights and freedoms
or legitimate interests of any person.
I can appreciate that there is a public interest
in your Committee having sight of the full documentation to give
them an insight into how the unlawful trade in personal Information
operates. I can also appreciate that heavily redacted extracts
would not be an adequate substitute. However I have to set this
against the legitimate privacy interests of those whose details
are included in the invoices and ledgers. Some of the information
is about celebrities or other public figures, but much of it is
about individuals who may be or may have been connected to such
persons but are not celebrities or public figures themselves.
It includes addresses, ex-directory phone numbers and other personal
details which, because they had to be obtained in an underhand
manner, are clear1y information that the individuals concerned
would not wish to have made public.
In order to satisfy our respective responsibilities
may I suggest that my staff should make the full collection of
invoices and ledgers available for inspection by you as Committee
Chairman or by someone you might wish to nominate to act on your
behalf such as the Clerk to the Committee? Such access would of
course be on the basis that the confidentiality of any personal
information is maintained. This approach would mean that, with
explanations that my staff would be happy to provide, you would
be able to understand the full nature and extent of the ledgers
and invoices without the risk of the personal information therein
being taken away or disclosed more widely. So far as redaction
is concerned I have no difficulty in principle in supplying you
with redacted versions of the invoices and ledgers. My concern
is a practical one. The invoices fill a large cardboard box and
there are four A4 ledgers that run to around 100 double sided
pages each. I estimate that it would take a member of staff between
one and two weeks to perform the redaction needed to remove any
personally identifiable information. I also have doubts as to
whether supplying redacted versions of all the ledgers and art
the invoices would serve any useful purpose. We will willingly
supply you with redacted extracts from the invoices and ledgers
that could be made public to illustrate the form the documentation
takes. However given the extent of redaction necessary it is unlikely
that any greater degree of public knowledge and understanding
would be achieved by simply increasing the volume of redacted
information released.
I hope that I have been able to suggest a way
forward that is acceptable to you and your Committee. If so please
let me know so that we can start to put the proposed arrangements
into place.
August 2009
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