Data Protection In Jersey And Other Offshore Jurisdictions

After a rigorous two year assessment programme, Jersey has recently achieved a positive assessment for adequacy of its data protection regime from the European Commission.

The Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005 ("DP Law") was adopted by the States of Jersey on 30 June 2004. The DP Law was modelled on the UK data protection legislation and was aimed specifically to satisfy the requirements of the EU Directive 94/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and the free movement of such data.

As a result most provisions of the DP Law would be very familiar to UK and European practitioners. It basically embodies the eight data protection principles, inter alia, permitting only fair and lawful processing of personal data which is adequate, relevant, not excessive and accurate, up-to-date and timely, for specified lawful purposes only and imposing upon data