A Data Protection Approach to Data Matching Operations Among Public Bodies

Abstract

Data matching operations have been promoted as an administrative panacea that helps to reduce costs while maximising efficiency and combating fraud. Nevertheless, they may constitute at the same time a brutal invasion into individuals' privacy. After an extensive effort to define precisely data matching and distinguish such processing from similar filing operations, a data protection approach will be attempted through a given axis of analysis in order to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of this legislative approach.

Keywords: Data, Protection