Legal implications of data processing : privacy and data protection law

Abstract

When I first started playing around with a soldering iron in my early teens I thought that I had merely discovered yet another fascinating hobby: electronics. But as I pored over hobbyist magazines and tested every new kit bought, watching wave patterns change on the oscilloscope screen, I realised that I was watching a revolution in the making. The old glass "valves" of the 'forties and 'fifties had. by the mid-sixties, begun to be replaced by the tiny transistor. The silicon revolution had begun and "solid-state" technology hit the streets. Yet, in the 'seventies I was watching the three and four legged transistors fading into obsolescence: they were pushed out of the scene by little silicon "chips" called IC's (integrated circuits). These little beasts had eight and sixteen legs at first but then they began to get more and more complex as one manufacturer vied with another to make ever-smaller and evermore powerful "chips". Today, a small micro-chip can perform the same functions previously carried out by hundreds of thousands of transistors. These tiny chips can process electronic impulses by the million at breath-taking speed and they became the heart and brain of the modern computer. If my hobby had introduced me to the awesome data processing abilities of the computer, direct work experience convinced me of the machine's usefulness. Thus the stage was set for further developments. It was therefore perhaps only natural. on my commencing my studies in Law. for me to ask myself the question "Can The computer be used as a fool for the lawyer?." But while I was looking for an answer to this first question I discovered the significance of an even more important question: "To what extent should !he computer be a subject of !he Law?" There are many facets to the issues posed by the latter question which implies an examination of all the legal implications of data processing by computers. Limitations of scope and space have perforce meant that this thesis had to be restricted to just one aspect of this last question: Privacy and Data Protection Law. When the silicon chip appeared on the scene it took a lot of fun out of my electronics hobby. Components in any gadget became fewer and fewer until the chip had replaced practically everything. What before had been a complex puzzle now simply became a matter of soldering a few ancillary components onto the board around the chip. Today, however. these little chips are not only affecting somebody's idea of what a hobby should offer, but. through the computer. they are also changing the way we live in many other ways. Within the next decade or so they will have changed the way we bank, the way we pay for almost everything we buy. the way we shop. the way we receive information and news. the way we work, even, perhaps. the way we think and the values which we apply in our day-to-day decisions. Of more immediate concern than the effect data processing may have in the near future. is the nature of the effect it has already had on the society in which we live. The law in many countries has been changed to meet the consequences of this effect whereas in many more countries, Malta included, these changes still have be introduced. Without wishing to be alarmist on the one hand, nor complacent on the other hand. this treatise is written in the belief that. if the Law is to be of any use to Society, then our legal systems too must adapt themselves to the Computer Age.