Title: .A.7. NOTIFICATION TO THE SUPERVISORY AUTHORITY (ARTICLE 18)

The transparency of personal data processing is a key notion of data protection law. Notification to the supervisory authority is designed to ensure disclosure of the purposes and main features of any processing operation in order to verify that the operation is in accordance with the national implementation of the directive. It is also designed to know who collects data. The information to be given in the notification must includes among others name and address of the controller, purpose(s) of the processing, categories of data subjects and categories of data processed, categories of recipients to whom the data might be disclosed. Most of this information must be published in a public register. This public register may be inspected by any person but hardly helps individuals to control the constructions of profiles.

Many standard types of data processing are exempted from notification in the national laws of Member States. Also, the public register does not allow the user to know which persons or companies in fact posses, use or process his personal data, because only categories of subjects (and not the subjects themselves), only categories of data (and not the data themselves) and only the categories of recipients (and not the recipients themselves) to whom the data might be disclosed, are indicated in the notification.