Data protection act 1984 and 1998 (Emmet Ryan)

The 1998 data protection act extended that of 1984, including paper based data.The law was introduced to help answer those what-if questions...who will be able to access the information?,will it be vunerable to hackers?, may my information be sold on?...However they were exceptions to the law...if the information required was to safeguard the national security, if used for the prevention/detection of crime and if the data was used strictly for the collection of taxes.Therefore the rights of individuals include to have any errors corrected, compensation for any distress caused as result of the act being broken, to see data held on themselves within 40 days days of payment and to prevent processing likely to cause damage or distress.The act generally provided individuals with certain rights and impossed penalties for the breaking of the law.