The data privacy risk at your estate gate: the open visitor book
Why the paper visitor book at an estate gate is a data protection risk for the committee, and how to run a gate that collects less and keeps it shorter.
This article is a plain-language orientation, not legal advice. The sections of the Data Protection Act 2019 named below are how we read them, and are marked for a lawyer to confirm. If your committee needs a view on its own position, ask a lawyer.
For decades, Kenyan estates have run their gates on one piece of stationery: the counter book at the barrier, the “black book”.
Every visitor is asked for a phone number, a full name and the house they are visiting, and sometimes an ID card is held at the desk until they leave. If your estate, court or gated community still works this way, your residents’ association carries a data protection risk it may not have noticed.
Your committee decides, so your committee answers
Many committees assume data protection law is for banks and hospitals. It is not. The Act’s word for whoever decides why personal data is collected, and how, is the data controller (section 2, for a lawyer to confirm). When a residents’ association tells its security company to take visitors’ details at the gate, the association is making that decision.
Three risks of the open book
1. Everyone can read everyone
The Act asks a controller to protect personal data from being seen by people who should not see it (section 41, for a lawyer to confirm). An open book does the opposite. A visitor leaning over the desk to write their own line can read the names, phone numbers and house numbers of everyone who came before them that day.
2. Nobody is told why
A controller should collect only what it needs, for a purpose it can state (section 25, for a lawyer to confirm). A book at the barrier rarely says why the details are taken, who will see them, or when they will be thrown away.
3. Old books never go away
Personal data should not be kept for longer than it is needed (section 39, for a lawyer to confirm). A full book goes under the desk, then into a cupboard, then out with the rubbish, with hundreds of people’s details still in it.
A gate that collects less
Moving away from the open book is mostly a change in how the gate works:
- Visitors bring a code. A resident invites someone by name, and the visitor gets a six-digit code that works once. The officer types it, or scans it, and sees the visitor’s name and the house that invited them. Nothing is written where the next visitor can read it. With NIPE code, codes and phone numbers are encrypted before they are stored.
- Tell people why. Put a short notice at the gate that names the estate as the one responsible for visitor details and says what they are for. Your lawyer can help you word it.
- Decide how long, and stick to it. Choose how many days gate records are kept. In NIPE code your manager sets it on the property’s Policy page, and records older than that are deleted.
Putting the open book away is one of the simplest things a committee can do to protect its residents, its visitors and itself.