A bank cashier has been fined £800 and made to pay £400 costs and a £15 victims’ surcharge by Brighton Magistrates Court for illegally accessing the personal data of a sex attack victim. The cashier, whose husband had been convicted of the offence, viewed the victim’s account and banking records, employer details and lending records on eight occasions over eight months in order to build a picture of the woman that had accused her husband. The maximum penalty available to the courts for offences involving illegally obtaining personal data under s.55 of the Data Protection Act is £5000 where the case is heard in a Magistrates’ Court and an unlimited fine in the Crown Court.
The case has caused the Information Commissioner to reiterate his calls for custodial sentences for serious data protection offences, saying that the lack of court powers to impose a criminal sentence “beggars belief” and adding that “the courts are not able to impose the punishment to fit the crime in all cases, because the current penalty for this all too common offence (illegally obtaining personal data) is limited to a fine rather than the full range of possible sentences.”
