In news that should surprise no one, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has ruled that the locations of two oprhaned oil or gas well bores do not amount to personal data, for the purposes of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR).
Perhaps more interestingly, the ICO cites the much-derided-but-probably-still-good-law case of Durant:
The Commissioner accepts that placing the two addresses into the public domain would allow the [owners of the land] to be identified. However, she does not consider that the information that would be revealed via disclosure “relates to” those individuals and it is therefore not their personal data…
And specifically refers to the famous dicta of Mr Justice Auld (as he was) from the Durant case
Mere mention of the data subject in a document held by a data controller does not necessarily amount to his personal data. Whether it does so in any particular instance depends on where it falls in a continuum of relevance or proximity to the data subject as distinct, say, from transactions or matters in which he may have been involved to a greater or lesser degree. It seems to me that there are two notions that may be of assistance. The first is whether the information is biographical in a significant sense, that is, going beyond the recording of the putative data subject’s involvement in a matter or an event that has no personal connotations, a life event in respect of which his privacy could not be said to be compromised. The second is one of focus. The information should have the putative data subject as its focus rather than some other person with whom he may have been involved or some transaction or event in which he may have figured or have had an interest, for example, as in this case, an investigation into some other person’s or body’s conduct that he may have instigated. In short, it is information that affects his privacy, whether in his personal or family life, business or professional capacity
So, at least for now, oil wells will stay out of the list of Things Which Have Been Found to be Personal Data.
And as my esteemed colleague Adam Rose notes, oil’s well that ends well. Pun complaints should be addressed here.
The views in this post (and indeed most posts on this blog) are my personal ones, and do not represent the views of any organisation I am involved with.
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