TNAG-2862-FCO40-4116-Article-XIX-(lobby-group-for-press-freedom)-and-Hong-Kong-Jo-1993 — Page 32

2

Page 2 of Annex E

(vi)

(vii)

Personal data held for the purposes of

(a) the prevention or detection of crime;

(b) the apprehension or prosecution of offenders; or

(c) the assessment or collection of any tax or duty.

should be exempt from the subject access and non-disclosure provisions in any case in which the application of the those provisions would be likely to prejudice those purposes.

The Council of Europe recommendations regulating the use of personal data in the police sector should be adopted.

(These recommendations are generally encompassed by the application of the data protection principles, but they provide a useful supplement in some respects. For example, they are more emphatic that data should be deleted when it is no longer necessary for its original purpose.)

(C) Exemptions of Confidential Data

(viii) The following data are recommended for exemption

from the access provisions :

(ix)

(a) evaluative material or

or other data pertaining to appointments particularly affecting the public interest, such as to the judiciary and regulators of the financial markets.

(b) data for which a claim for legal professional

privilege could be made out.

(c) data of such a nature that providing access is likely to cause serious harm to the physical or mental health of the data subject.

Given judicious editing by the data user will often facilitate release of most if not all of the data which are the subject of the request, it is recommended that where an exemption from the access provisions is provided for competing public purposes, access requests should be complied with insofar as it is possible to do So without prejudicing those

those purposes. Furthermore, with the exception of access exemptions claimed for national security, defence or international relations, the data protection authority should upon application review the release of data where the data user has claimed an access exemption. This approach is adopted by a number of European jurisdictions (though not the U.K.). The independent review of the release of security and police data by the data protection authority are viewed in France and Germany as an important protection of civil liberties.