Data Protection and privacy - Essay Example

ormation given to schools, workplaces, banks, healthcare facilities and even in any local government firm are handled and kept securely and to what grounds can an institution be called of breach in giving a person’s pertinent data if ever they are liable. People have really grown out of their freedom shell as human right propagators and enthusiasts have culminated for the right of a person to data protection and privacy. What is data protection? It is the area of the law that governs what may, and what may not, be done with confidential information obtained.

Personal information is in various forms, it may be in electronic form such as the ones stored on a computer hard drive or in manual form or the written forms. Furthermore data protection law, coming from the word protect, sets out rules about the methods by which personal information may be obtained from people, the ways that organisations may and may not use personal information, when organisations may and may not transfer personal information to other organisations, and provides security obligations for the storage and transfer of personal information.

Data protection law also regulates the use of personal data for marketing purposes, and restricts the sending of personal information across the borders where there is no equal protection to data deemed (Carey, 2009). Personal data as discussed in an article by Carey (2009), for better conceptualization, is defined as any information which identifies a living individual may it be in electronic or manual form. Examples of information capable of amounting to personal data include a person’s name, address, email address, DNA sample, image, and even records of transactions such as use of credit cards.

Obtaining, storing, copying, filing, transferring or anything and everything that can be done to such data is called data processing (Carey, 2009). Data protection law requires three things—registration, compliance with data protection rules and attention to