In the UK, can documents obtained through Freedom of Information be shared with friends? If you have obtained certain documents from a government agency in the UK through a Freedom of Information request, are you allowed to send a copy of these documents to a friend who might also be interested in looking at these documents? Parts of the obtained documents have already been redacted by the government agency as they deemed necessary (to protect certain details, presumably).
united-states In the United States, information released through the federal Freedom of Information (FoI) process, or any of the various state-level versions of FoI, is considered public information. The person who receives it may share it at will, or publish it. Indeed many such inquiries are made by news reporters who intend to publish the information, and many others are routinely posted to various web sites. I suspect that the law on this point in the UK is similar, but I have not checked it.
Yes. The police have the power to seize your phone as evidence under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, and the Terrorism Act 2000. There are no caveats or defined circumstances other than having a reasonable belief that the data on the phone forms evidence against you. They do not require a warrant to access your phone, and many police forces in the UK are using commercially available software to bypass password/PIN protection on your phone 1. In the event you do not provide your password/thumbprint/facial scan/PIN to officers to unlock your phone, you can be served with a Section 49 Notice under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) which compels you to provide that information. Failure to do so can lead to a conviction under Section 53 RIPA, in addition to any other offences you may be charged with.
The site would combine the data in novel ways, which is processing the data. Processing personal data which is publicly available is still processing personal data. You would have to take GDPR into account. That does not mean the processing is forbidden, but you need a legal basis for doing it. In many ways, having the informed consent is the easiest legal basis, but there are others. The data subject would have the right to demand information about the data you hold, and to demand the correction of wrong data. There is not necessarily a right to demand deletion, but if consent is withdrawn and you have no other basis for data processing, you have to delete. Note also that the consent basis would mean you have to actively contact the people whose consent you seek before the processing starts, and document how you do it. That makes pay-per-request models difficult. But consider that the news media can process some data about some people without the consent of the subjects of their activities. They just need to balance privacy and other legitimate interests all the time.
The Canadian law governing interception of communication (wiretapping and recording) is explained here. Canada is a one-party country, so as long as one party (you, for example) consent, this would not be a violation of that statute. That source also believes (not unreasonably) that is would not constitute the tort of invasion of privacy since under the act The nature and degree of privacy to which a person is entitled … is that which is reasonable in the circumstances, giving due regard to the lawful interests of others (bearing in mind that is it allowed w.r.t. Section 184(1) of the Criminal Code: that is, it is reasonable to do so).
It should not surprise you that copyright protects the right to (among other things) make copies. There are limited exceptions that are considered &quot;fair use&quot;, like if you reproduce a limited amount of text for educational, reporting, or review purposes. Giving your friend a copy of a large portion of the text just because they want it would almost certainly violate copyright. Whether the book is available or out-of-print has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on who holds the copyright or whether your actions violate it. This is very different from giving your friend the book itself. The book itself is covered under the &quot;first sale doctrine&quot;, meaning that by buying a copy of the book, you buy the right to sell, transfer, or dispose of that particular copy, but it doesn't give you the right to make more copies. I will note that in practice, it is vanishingly unlikely that the copyright holder would ever learn of your isolated instance of limited infringement in the first place (especially since it's out of print), much less bring legal action against you for making a single copy that did not affect their bottom line.
In the general case, it seems unlikely, based on the wording (which is convoluted). In certain cases, if the president of Russia posts "My name is Vladimir Putin", that post is personal data. On the other hand, you might, based on my writing, conclude that I am from the US, and you might even conclude that I'm in Washington state, but that doesn't distinguish me from 7.5 million others, so on those grounds that is not personal data. Eventually, though, you might identify me specifically from other things that I may have said on SE. The definition depends on two parts. First, personal data is "information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person". Any "information" provided by a natural person is "related to" that person (as is any "information" that is about such a person). The second part defines "identifiable natural person", that is, who is an "identifiable person"? Every person can, in principle, be identified by reference to some label or description of fact about them, so every person is an identifiable person, under this definition. This means that every piece of text that refers to an individual (not even text which can identify the person) is "personal data". Obviously, any individual can be uniquely identified by some collection of identifiers; the problem is that the wording of the law does not explicitly say "using that supposed personal data". If I mention that I have a relative named Knudt, that would technically be personal data: I've given information that relates to a person, though you have no idea (and could not possibly figure out) who that person is. Another term that the regulation defines and uses in a few places is "pseudonymization", which is defined as the processing of personal data in such a manner that the personal data can no longer be attributed to a specific data subject without the use of additional information, provided that such additional information is kept separately and is subject to technical and organisational measures to ensure that the personal data are not attributed to an identified or identifiable natural person The point of interest here is that this says that "personal data" which cannot be attributed to an individual is, nevertheless, still personal data. I think the most important part of the regulation is art. 6, which defines lawfulness of processing, especially para 4., which allows consideration to be given to safeguards such as pseudonymization.
In short, no. Article 20 of the GDPR covers the “Right to data portability”, which essentially says two main things: The data subject had the right to an exported copy of their personal data in a common format And The data subject has the right to have this data transmitted directly from one controller to another where technically feasible. Neither of these rights as stated in the GDPR require the data controller to provide a button to initiate either a data export or a transfer to another controller.
This question is framed such that it could include myriad different scenarios that could lead to a search of one's personal computer. You seem to gear the bulk of your inquiry toward when the government can search, but then move to when a corporate entity has the right to do so, which is a very different thing. These are different issues with different concepts and rules that dictate when this can occur lawfully. You might want to narrow your question a bit. By way of generalization: the citizens of the U.S. have an implied right to privacy as construed through the Bill of Rights, even though there is no explicit right written into the constitution. The most common way to conduct a search in the U.S. is with probable cause through a search warrant. There are questions and answers both on here, as well as resources all over the internet, pertaining to constitutionally accepted forms of search and seizure such that you could get that information fairly easily. However, as with the U.K., and despite any rights (explicit or implicit), there are many ways your computer could be searched by the government - both known to the owner and unknown - and even remotely, that use means less common to the standard search warrant. As you've probably heard from the revelations of Edward Snowden (Wikileaks), the governments of the world have been shown to search metadata and other electronic records without a warrant under laws aimed toward protecting national security. In the U.S. the Patriot Act gave wide reaching powers to invade the privacy of individuals that required no oversight or basis for doing so. Corporations that deal with the transmission of data work with government entities to to accomplish this end. As one individual has already noted, you subject yourself to search (which includes your computer) upon entry to the country through customs. There are many ways that the government can and does engender to search computers, computer files, emails, metadata, etc. A corporation may search your personal computer under a contractual relationship you create with it (for instance if you work from home and elect to use your home computer, and to do so you elect to agree to allow the entity to inspect your computer for their intellectual property in certain circumstances). They can also do this pursuant to a civil lawsuit, which can allow for the inspection of your computer through the process of discovery. These are just some of the ways your information can become subject to inspection (search) by government or corporate entities. Again, your question would need to be limited more to address any one situation more fully.