Office of the Privacy Commissioner | Case note 294247 [2019] NZPriv Cmr 1: Phone provider refuses access to incoming data
A man asked his phone provider for records of calls from his landlord and texts that they had exchanged. The phone provider told him that he would need a court order to access that information.
The provider’s position was that the records were the landlord’s personal information and not the man’s, because the man had received the calls and texts rather than sent them. The man complained to our office.
Incoming and outgoing telecommunications information
The man’s complaint raised issues under rule 6 of the Telecommunications Information Privacy Code 2003 (TIPC). Under this rule, individuals have a right to access telecommunications information that a telecommunications agency holds about them, unless one of the withholding grounds in the TIPC apply.
Under the TIPC, telecommunications information includes:
- the personal information the agency collects when someone signs up for a phone
- any data associated with calling or texting. This includes the duration of a call and the numbers of the sender and recipient.
- the content of calls and texts, if the agency records them.
The TIPC does not make any distinction between telecommunications information that a person sends and telecommunications information they receive – that person is entitled to access both.
The definition of personal information
The Privacy Act defines personal information as “information about an identifiable individual”. This can be any information that tells us something about a specific person. Personal information does not need to name the individual if it identifies them in other ways.
In this case, the information that the provider withheld showed that someone called and texted the man within a period of two weeks. We considered this to be personal information about the man.
Section 29(1)(a)
The phone provider also relied on section 29(1)(a) of the Privacy Act to withhold the information. Section 29(1)(a) allows an agency to withhold personal information if disclosing it would be an unwarranted disclosure of the affairs of another individual.
The landlord used the man’s name in the text messages. It was clear that they knew each other, and that the landlord wanted the man to see the content of the text messages. We could see no reason why giving the man a copy of the text messages would be an unwarranted disclosure of the landlord’s affairs.
Conclusion
For these reasons, it was our investigator's view that the phone provider had no proper basis to withhold information from the man and had interfered with his privacy.
We told the provider our view, and that the TIPC does not distinguish between incoming and outgoing telecommunications. The provider agreed to release the information to the man but reserved its position that the telecommunications data that a person receives is not their personal information.
The man was satisfied, and we closed the complaint.