7 Treatment of personal data
85. How personal data is treated is clearly crucial
to the success of and popular support for individual registration.
The White Paper does not prescribe in detail the practicalities
of how data submitted as part of an IER application or acquired
through data matching should be treated.[90]
In outline, the Government proposes that national insurance number
data should be disposed of once an identity has been verified,
while date of birth information should be retained (but not published)
to help identify duplicate entries.[91]
86. Our witnesses generally had little to say about
data protection and privacy issues. The memoranda from EURIM[92]
and the London School of Economics[93]
are notable exceptions. Michel Saminaden of SOLACE told us "in
terms of coping technically, we will; we always do and we ...
will come across data protection problems and we will have to
deal with those as they come along".[94]
87. The Association of Electoral Administrators were
confident that EROs would be able to deal with the retention and
disposal of large amounts of data, stating that "we haven't
seen the detail of how that will be handled, but whenever new
challenges have been thrown at both the electoral profession and
the suppliers, the IT suppliers who support them, generally it
has worked".[95]
88. The Information Commissioner's Office do not
have any concerns either: "we are pleased to note the importance
attached to the security of personal data in these proposals and
welcome the commitment demonstrated by the intention to introduce
a fine or custodial sentence for misuse of data".[96]
89. The Government's proposals for data collection,
retention, and disposal appear to us to be proportionate. However,
much of the detail is still unknown.
90 Ev w23 Back
91
Cm 8108, para 25 Back
92
Ev w10 Back
93
Ev w21 Back
94
Q 144 Back
95
Q 144 Back
96
Ev w12 Back
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