Abstract
Abstract. The EU Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data aims at harmonising data protection legislation in the European Union. This should promote the free flow of products and services within the EU. This research found a wide variety of interpretations of the application of data protection legislation to geographic data. The variety was found among the different EU Member States, the different stakeholders and the different types of geographic data. In the Netherlands, the Data Protection Authority (DPA) states that panoramic images of streets are considered personal data. While Dutch case law judges that the data protection legislation does not apply if certain features are blurred and no link to an address is provided. The topographic datasets studied in the case studies do not contain personal data, according to the Dutch DPA, while the German DPA and the Belgian DPA judge that topographic maps of a large scale can contain personal data, and impose conditions on the processing of topographic maps. The UK DPA does consider this data outside of the scope of legal definition of personal data. The patchwork of differences in data protection legislation can be harmonised by using a traffic light model. This model focuses on the context in which the processing of the data takes place and has four categories of data: (1) sensitive personal data, (2) personal data, (3), data that can possibly lead to identification, and (4) non-personal data. For some geographic data, for example factual data that does not reveal sensitive information about a person, can be categorised in the third category giving room to opening up data under the INSPIRE Directive.
Highlights
In 1957, the Treaty of Rome was signed, and the European Economic Community (EEC) established
In the Netherlands, there is no concern from the Data Protection Authority (DPA) about the use of images of a property
Google Street View images are considered personal data according to the Dutch DPA, because they can be used to identify natural persons and they can have consequences for the data subject, and it should be processed according to the Dutch data protection act
Summary
In 1957, the Treaty of Rome was signed, and the European Economic Community (EEC) established. In 1992 the Treaty of Maastricht was signed and in 1993 the creation of a single market was realized. In this internal market companies are able to produce and sell products without barriers (European Commission, 2014). Reusers of the data have problems with varying licensing, pricing and transparency norms in Member States to create value added products on the European internal market (European Commission, 2011a). When geographic data is considered personal data, there are strict conditions for storing, using and processing the geographic data. Research shows that EU Member States implement the Personal Data Protection Directive in different ways (Korff, 2002 and 2010). To what extent geographic data is considered personal data differs between the different Member States
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