Taxi Driver Online

Stockton Council
and why?


Taken from the Stockton Evening Gazette
End website woe for taxi drivers

What is the logic behind the home addresses of taxi drivers being posted on a council website? Here we have men and women who already feel threatened and vulnerable in their jobs, now worrying even more about their safety.

And for what purpose?

Stockton Council says regulations demand the authority maintains a public register of all licensed Hackney Carriage proprietors.

Is it a sensible way of following these rules to display the names and full home addresses of more than 200 taxi drivers on a website that can be accessed by anyone at any time? Or is it more a case of bureaucracy gone mad?

Laws are brought in for the greater good. By interpreting this particular piece of legislation in this way the council has angered and worried hundreds of taxi drivers and their families. But it is harder to see who has benefited.

The drivers' fears are not only that customers with a gripe could turn up on their doorstep day or night but, because of the public nature of their job, burglars could take advantage of the web site information too.

It's a situation that demands some clear thinking and some clear action.

It might be a matter that ultimately requires a change in law. For now it's a matter that requires common sense and understanding.

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IDFIMH

Perhaps if it was proposed that all employees had thier names addresses and telephone numbers published, then the council would see the errors of its ways.

its about "open government" we must provide information.

a tip to Stockton Cabbies under the freedom of information act you can see bills and invoices of the council once per year.

set up a website and publish as many salaries of named people as you can
give addresses too.

this website will then find less enthusiasm to provide meaningless info to others than crooks burglars and the like

There is part of me that thinks even the current proceedure of having a public list of HC owners, goes against the DPA.

But this fiasco of putting the details up on the net is just madness.

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IDFIMH

Stockton have got it wrong.

Section 51 of the Local Govt(Misc Prov) Act 1976 states:

It shall be the duty of a Council to enter in a register
a)The name of the person to whom the licence was granted
b) The date on which and the period for which it was issued and
c If the licence has a serial number , that number

Anything else is protected data and should not be put into the Public domain. Someone should question the decision to post this information on web sites as it is almost certainly ultra vires.

As a general rule, all statutory registers are open to inspection by members of the public. Some local authorities have taken this to heart and, for example, publish details of members' interests on their Internet websites.

As part of New Labour's modernisation agenda, the Government is very keen to see local authorities promote use of the Internet. Indeed, they have set very demanding targets to ensure that council services can be accessed in such ways. Clearly the inspection of public records is one such service that can easily be delivered via the Council website.

Until they put the names and addresses of their LOs up on the net, they should leave the PH/HC well alone.

The bloody job is unsafe as it is.

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IDFIMH

could not agree more
perhaps they should list the names addresses of the staff in the licensing office whilst there at it

Anyone wishing to fight against this type of thing should first inform themselves of their rights. With particular reference to the Data protection act.

http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/eventual.aspx?id=33

Best wishes

John Davies

And the pricks have gone and done it.
http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/stoc ... hicles.pdf

There is also a word document link to.

http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/stockton/worddocs/Pubregvehicles.doc

There is a very good recent ruling by the High Court about what should be deemed private personal information.

It involves the case of Durant v FSA.

It is worth taking particular notice of what is said about a persons private address being divulged. The following extract is taken from the summary,

Where an individual’s name appears in information the name will only be ‘personal data’ where its inclusion in the information affects the named individual’s privacy. Simply because an individual’s name appears on a document, the information contained in that document will not necessarily be personal data about the named individual. It is more likely that an individual’s name will be ‘personal data’ where the name appears together with other information about the named individual such as address, telephone number2 or information regarding his hobbies3. As such, marketing lists containing a name together with contact details such as address and/or telephone number and/or e-mail will be personal data.

There is also an interesting section in the Data Protection act about Data protection managers taking great care as to not to divulge personal data which could lead to a persons private details being harvested for the purpose of unsolicted mail etc. There is no relief from this section a Data protection manager must comply with this section of the act.

In the scenario we have here the Local Council is the Data Manager.

The Council on their website say that they have to legally make a register of all individuals who hold a licence, however, I suspect there is no mention that this register has to be publicly displayed on a website.

If any licence holder from this Authority reads this thread I would strongly advise them to look at the appeals procedure, which can be viewed here.

http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/eventual.aspx?id=32#Information%20about%20you

It is worth remembering that Councils have an obligation to publish information but whether or not they have the right to publish the address of the licence holder in this instance, is debatable.

http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/cms/DocumentUploads/The%20%e2%80%98Durant%e2%80%99%20Case%20and%20its%20impact%20on%20the%20interpretation%20of%20the%20Data%20Protection%20Act%201998.pdf

You can read the complete data protection act from here.

http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/eventual.aspx?id=34

Best wishes

JD

Now please someone explain to me how a council can take this.

Sec 42 of the 1847 Act
Licences to be registered Every licence shall be made out by the clerk of the commissioners, and duly entered in a book to be provided by him for that purpose; and in such book shall be contained columns or places for entries to be made of every offence committed by any proprietor or driver or person attending such carriage; and any person may at any reasonable time inspect such book, without fee or reward.

To mean you must have your full inns and outs put on the net?

Officaldom gone mad.

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IDFIMH

I couldn't agree more Mr LO Guest. In fact I think it is worse than that.

Section 51 of the 1976 Act relates to PH vehicles. To me all that should be registered publically against a taxi under sec 42 of the 1847 Act, is every offence committed by any proprietor or driver or person attending such carriage .

Nowhere have I seen it said that taxi info is open to the world. Oh, apart from a clueless council up north.

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IDFIMH

As you can see this thread was started in 2004 and it relates to
personal information of Taxi drivers being published on the internet.

In this thread I referred to the case of Durant v FSA
which at the time became the leading case in respect
of Data protection. The case was that important that the
DPA has had to ammend its guidance on Data Protection.

The DPA issued new guidlines yesterday which take into account
the ruling in the Durant case.

We are all aware that the balancing act that must be
acomplished by Public authorities is the need to be conscious
of the crucial interface between Data Protection and
Freedom of Information and that the individual's right to "privacy"
is not compromised by the publics right to know?

There is another relevant case on data protection from the
Scottish courts concerning NHS information, which is subject
to a House of Lords appeal.

http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/ ... reface.pdf

Regards

JD

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Copyright notice © The contents of this post are copyright of JD and are not to be reproduced outside of TDO without written permission.

8.1 Can data about objects be personal data about an individual even though the data controller does not currently use such data to learn, record or determine something about that individual? Even though the data is not usually processed by the data controller to provide information about an individual, if there is a reasonable chance that the data will be processed for that purpose, the data will be personal data.

Example: A taxi firm may record the movements of the taxis in its fleet by using vehicle tracking devices. The data is used by the firm to help provide the taxi service in that the control centre will know where all the taxis are at any one time and will therefore, on receiving a request for a taxi, be able to direct the nearest taxi to pick up the new passenger. The data is not intended to be used to inform the taxi firm as to the whereabouts of each individual taxi driver, but to plot the location of the fleet of taxis.

Even though the data was not intended to be used to record individual drivers’ movements, the taxi control staff will usually know which driver is driving which taxi at any particular time and the data could therefore be used, without any adjustment, to locate a driver. If family members needed to contact a taxi driver, they could ask one of the taxi control staff to use the taxi location data to provide the location. Consequently the taxi location data may be personal data about the taxi drivers.

If, as a matter of fact, data is occasionally processed to learn something about an individual, even though it was not the data controller’s intention to process the data for this purpose, this data will be personal data as the processing does, or is likely to, impact on the individual.

Example: If we consider the taxi location data referred to in the example given above, if the control centre occasionally uses the taxi data to locate individual drivers, even though this was not the data controller’s primary purpose for processing, the taxi location data will be personal data about the individual drivers.

It should be remebered that all personal data disclosure is protected by Article 8 of the Human Rights Act which guarantees the right to respect for "private" and family life. Therefore if you feel your human rights in respect of privacy are being violated then there are ways to remedy the situation.

Regards

JD

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Copyright notice © The contents of this post are copyright of JD and are not to be reproduced outside of TDO without written permission.