Informations in Enhanced Regime of the Protection by the EU Law: Sensitive Data

Informations in enhanced regime of the protection by the EU Law: sensitive data. The text discusses the special privacy protection defined in the article 8 of the Data Protection Directive (Directive 95/46/EC). The basic norm saysthat member states of the European Union shall prohibit the processing of personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade-union membership, and the processing of data concerning health or sex life. Exceptions which permit this processing are following:

• the explicit consent of the data subject, which can be problematic in the online environment,
• data is manifestly made public by its subject,
• data is concerned with the membership in specified organizations or
• the necessity associated with a particular interest which is recognized by the law, these values relate to the employment law matters, the vital interests, the defence of legal claims and the health-care services.

Restrictions also impact on the processing of data relating to law proceedings. One of the weaknesses of the Data Protection Directive is the silence about economic and location data. The issue of the indirect identification by non-sensitive characteristics is not explicitly solved in the directive. It can be a source of controversy that the concept of sensitive data is criticisable for its too close relations with anti-discrimination law.