“Uber gives police private data on drivers and passengers” announces The Times(£) this morning.
In this post, much to my surprise (I have never taken an Uber, and don’t intend to – I don’t like their business model), I come to the defence of Uber.
A closer read of the Times piece reveals that what is being referred to, in documents filed with the High Court, in proceedings regarding TfL’s refusal to renew Uber’s licence, is requests to Uber from the police to disclose personal data for the purposes of the prevention and detection of crime or the apprehension or prosecution of offenders.
Such requests are commonly made to thousands of public authorities and private companies. They used to be known in data protection and police circles as “section 29 requests”, after the relevant section of the now-repealed Data Protection Act 1998. The term was a bit misleading: section 29, now replaced effectively by paragraph 2 of Schedule 2 to the Data Protection Act 2018, has the effect of disapplying the provisions of data protection law which would otherwise prevent the disclosure of personal data to the police (or others), and where not disclosing would be likely to prejudice the purposes of the prevention and detection of crime or the apprehension or prosecution of offenders. This is a necessary provision of data protection law, and provided that (as with all provisions) it is applied correctly and proportionately, it works very well: it gives controller the power to disclose personal data to the police where it is necessary for criminal justice.
If Uber are dealing with police requests appropriately, it is for the public good that personal data which assists the police to investigate drug transporting and human trafficking is made available to them.
In fact, I strongly suspect that The Times will receive such requests from the police. When the requests are related to the paper’s journalistic activities they are probably, and probably rightfully, refused, but they may well get requests in respect of their employees’ data, and I would be very surprised if they don’t sometimes – as a responsible company – comply with these.
Transport for London certainly receives such requests. Indeed, as a public authority, under its transparency measures, it has habitually made statistics on this public. The most recent publication I can find shows that 2012 to 2017 TfL received an average of approximately 10,000 requests each year.
Will The Times now report that TfL is handing over to the police thousands of pieces of intelligence on members of the public each year?
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