WHY COMMISSIONER WANTS THE LAW TO BE AMENDED
Serbian citizens are not sufficiently protected against identity theft and there are at least five ways in which their identities cold be abused and which they should be aware of.
"As regards personal data protection, what we have in Serbia are not gaps but abysses", said Mr. Rodoljub Sabic, Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection. "The international practice shows the "imagination" of identity thieves has no limits. The most robust personal data thefts are connected to large electronic personal databases in banks, systems engaged in e-trade or in public authorities. Contact or contactless reading of data on chips of smart credit or identification cards or passports are used for sophisticated thefts, but much more trivial methods are also used, such as scanning and copying of personal documents or mail, "mining" of archives or even rummaging through garbage", said Mr. Sabic. He said citizens should not forget that in many cases it is they themselves who serve their data "on a platter". Namely, these data are requested by all and sundry, but maybe the risk is the greatest when it comes to unique personal identification numbers (JMBG) which we all tend to disclose without question. Thus, a man received a ruling stating that his tax liability for an enterprise he allegedly owns amounted to 400 million dinars with all claims and interest. In another example, Mr. Jovan Nikolic from Smederevo received a ruling stating he should pay for a customs infringement made by a company he allegedly owns, although he actually does not own it. A case of a university professor has also been registered, who had problems because of an unpaid bill in a hotel in Germany, although she has never visited that country. Although the damage caused by identity theft in the world amounts to billions of dollars, this is not the case in Serbia, but that is not to say that there is no damage.
"Without knowing how, several people became owners of enterprises with multi-million debts for delivered goods, VAT, customs duty... Some of them were literally bombarded with court summons for criminal offences or infringements they allegedly committed in places they had never visited. However, the fact that such cases are relatively rare does not mean that there are not any", explained Mr. Sabic. These are some of the reasons why the Commissioner wants to the laws regulating information of public importance and personal data protection to be amended. As he said, there are virtually no legal provisions on some very delicate fields such as video surveillance, biometrics, security checks and activities of the private security sector.
