Is the Metropolitan Police Service currently registered under the Data Protection Act ?
Is London's Metropolitan Police Service actually currently registered under the Data Protection Act 1998?
It does not appear that the Metropolitan Police Service is currently registered under the Data Protection Act, at least according to the Information Commissioner's public search form
Key word searches like the Name field for: Metropolitan Police, Commissioner, Chief Constable, Metropolis, MPS, Scotland Yard etc. or Name: Police Address: London, or Address: Broadway and/or Postcode: SW1H 0BG for New Scotland Yard etc. do not lead to a Data Protection Register entry for the Metropolitan Police Service.
The staff at the Information Commissioner's Office could not seem to find any current or pending Data Protection Register entries on their internal systems either, when we telephoned them.
The Metropolitan Police website section on Data Protection does not mention any Data Protection Register entry details, and the MPS Public Access Office, who deal with DPA Subject Data Access Request Forms, does not seem to have this information to hand either.
David Mery reports that the Metropolitan Police Data Protection Register entry seems to have disappeared sometime after November 2005 !
Is the Metropolitan Police Service really acting illegally by not being currently registered under the Data Protection Act, or has the Office of the Information Commissioner somehow lost their registration, but not that of any other Police Force or Intelligence Agency or Government Department ?
Comments
Great blog, loving it.
Out of interest, where can one get a complete copy of the Data Protection Act to read through in full?
I've searched the web and the government web-pages which tell me all about the Act but I can't seem to find the Act itself to read....
Posted by: James | January 23, 2007 6:03 PM
@ James - re the Data Protection Act full text:
There is the Office of Public Sector Information version.
There is also the new, but still not up to date, Statute Law Database version, which should, eventually, show any amendments made by later legislation e.g.. after the Serious Crime Bill has weakened it even further.
Posted by: wtwu | January 23, 2007 6:54 PM
Thanks!
Silly me for thinking it would be easily readable and understandable...
No obvious get out clauses for the Met Police to be excluded though although I'm sure there are some loopholes in the legalese...
Posted by: James | January 23, 2007 10:41 PM
I don't remember exactly when I realised this, but it was much later. I hadn't fixed this link by June 2006 according to http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://gizmonaut.net/bits/suspect.html
It was probably in July 2006 when I checked for data on LGC and realised that it's impossible to give as permalink to a specific entry.
br -d
Posted by: David Mery | January 24, 2007 2:54 AM
The entry is public again...
http://gizmonaut.net/blog/uk/mps_magic_registration_number_is_Z4888193.html
br -d
Posted by: David Mery | March 6, 2007 9:50 PM