What Does Manifestly Unreasonable Mean?

Under PIPA, an organisation is not required to comply with your access request or the other PIPA rights requests outlined above – right to correction, right to erasure, right to block – if they think your request is “manifestly unreasonable”.

There is no set definition of what makes a PIPA rights request “manifestly unreasonable”. It will depend on the specific circumstances of your request. An organisation should explain the reasons for their decision, and as part of a written complaint you can ask PrivCom to review this decision.

For example, an organisation may consider a request to be “manifestly unreasonable” when it is clear that:

• it has been made with no real purpose except to cause them harassment or disruption to their business activities;

• the person making the request has no genuine intention of accessing their information (e.g., they may offer to withdraw their request in return for some kind of benefit, such as a payment from the organisation);

or

• the organisations hasn’t yet had the opportunity to deal with your earlier request.

To decide whether a PIPA rights request is “manifestly unreasonable”, an organisation must consider each request on a case-by-case basis and be able to explain their reasoning to you.

For example, an organisation may consider your PIPA rights request to be “manifestly unreasonable” when it is clear that the request has been made with no real purpose except to cause harassment or disruption to the organisation.

In such circumstances, the organisation can refuse to deal with the request.

In either case, the organisation will need to inform you and justify the decision.

The above-mentioned examples are not intended to be an exhaustive list of the types of individual rights that may be considered “manifestly unreasonable”. The facts of the matter shall dictate such a determination.

The organisation must still respond to you. It should explain to you why it believes your request is manifestly unreasonable and let you know about your right to complain about this decision to PrivCom or through courts. For more information, see pp. 27-29 (Making a complaint).