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GDPR - impact on photographers?


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General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). Strengthens data protection for individuals. Comes into force on 25 May 2018.
 

Although I am aware of GDPR because of some other work I do, I'd not given it much thought in relation to photography until I saw this:

 
According to the European Commission "personal data is any information relating to an individual, whether it relates to his or her private, professional or public life. It can be anything from a name, a home address, a photo, an email address, bank details, posts on social networking websites, medical information, or a computer’s IP address."
 
Note the inclusion of "a photo" (my highlighting).
 
Thinking about it further, a photo, and its associated metadata, can contain a lot of personal information - where someone was, when they were there, what they were doing, who they were with etc. Add keywords and a caption and there's potentially more data.
 
As in most things, these regulations will have no impact in the vast majority of cases. But will a disgruntled person in one of my photos, taken in a public place, be able to use GDPR to get the photo removed or worse?
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For news photographers rather than stock, there are some fairly wide protections and disapplications of data protection regulations.  I think we are likely to see the rich and famous try to use data protection to prevent publication.  If someone really wanted to make the argument in a stock photograph then there may be an issue.  However, as you rightly say, in th vast majority of cases it will not be an issue.

 

in terms of enforcement it will be interesting to see how hat works in practice.  I guess a complaint to the data commission (at least in the UK) 

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Note that the EU quote says "can not "is".

A photograph of an individual isn't usually personal data in the hands of the photographer. It's only if he does something with it in order to try to identify the individual that it might be.

See here, page 15.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwi_18LvrubXAhXOFsAKHVo4DrUQFggpMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fico.org.uk%2Fmedia%2Ffor-organisations%2Fdocuments%2F1554%2Fdetermining-what-is-personal-data.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0GHa55CKWpFZj9ocxJWnE_

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42 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

Note that the EU quote says "can not "is".

A photograph of an individual isn't usually personal data in the hands of the photographer. It's only if he does something with it in order to try to identify the individual that it might be.

See here, page 15.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwi_18LvrubXAhXOFsAKHVo4DrUQFggpMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fico.org.uk%2Fmedia%2Ffor-organisations%2Fdocuments%2F1554%2Fdetermining-what-is-personal-data.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0GHa55CKWpFZj9ocxJWnE_

Really useful link with some good information, thanks for sharing.

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  • 2 months later...
On 18/02/2018 at 00:43, Derek Adams said:

Unfortunately this link is to info from the ICO about the 1998 DPA rather that the 2018 GDPR. 

 

The law is still the law and the GDPR doesn't override it unless it conflicts.

Quote from the ICO guidance

https://ico.org.uk/media/1624219/preparing-for-the-gdpr-12-steps.pdf

Many of the GDPR’s main concepts and principles are much the same as
those in the current Data Protection Act (DPA),

 

There doesn't seem to be anything in the new guidance that would change what I've said- that a photograph isn't personal data per se.

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