Supplementary written evidence from the
Information Commissioner's Office
I refer to your letter of 20 October 2009. Christopher
Graham is out of the office at present and has asked me to respond
on his behalf.
You are right that the contents of the invoices and
ledgers relating to the Operation Motorman case have been transcribed
on to Excel spreadsheets and that it would be possible to make
this information available to your Committee in redacted form.
I assume that what you are suggesting here is the redaction of
personally identifiable information but not redaction of the names
of the media organisations that used the services of the private
detective concerned.
Even providing information in this form could
potentially place us in breach of Section 59 of the Data Protection
Act. This makes it a criminal offence for the Commissioner or
his staff to disclose any information that has been obtained under
the Data Protection Act and relates to an identifiable person
or business unless the disclosure is made with lawful authority.
Lawful authority is provided where the release of information
that identifies an individual or business is necessary in the
public interest. We are though conscious that we have already
released the names of the media organisations involved. If in
the light of this you are able to assure us that the further release
of information about the involvement of identifiable media organisations
is necessary for your inquiry we will be satisfied that the public
interest test has been met.
If we proceed to redaction of personally identifiable
information there are two possibilities. First we could simply
blank out all personally identifiable information such as names,
addresses and telephone numbers. We estimate that this would involve
around 15 days of staff time and could be completed in two weeks.
The second possibility would be to replace any
blanked out information with a description eg "telephone
number", "name". We estimate that this would take
roughly twice as long ie 30 days of staff time with completion
within four weeks.
We are prepared to proceed with either option
but would ask you to bear in mind that both options involve the
expenditure of public money on redaction and that, as you will
have seen when you visited us, the extent of redaction required
is such that the information that remains will reveal very little
more than is already known to your Committee. In this connection
our previous offer to provide you with redacted samples of the
invoices and ledgers rather than the complete set still stands.
If you wish us to proceed with redaction I should
be grateful if you could provide us with your assurance, as Chairman,
that the redacted information is necessary for your Committee's
inquiry together with an indication of which of the above options
you have selected. We will then proceed to prepare the redacted
information as quickly as we reasonably can.
November 2009
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