Commissioner for Information of Public Importance Rodoljub Šabić, evaluated submitting of Amendments to the Personal Data Protection Act by the Ombudsman Saša Janković, as a confirmation of the Ombudsman's readiness to consistently and in principle insist on civil rights' protection and he appealed to the Government of Serbia to accept those amendments as though the Government has made them. The Commissioner Rodoljub Šabić has especially stressed the importance of the amendments pleading for elimination of those provisions from the law proposal, that open up the opportunity for tricking the proclaimed protection. In relation to that, the Commissioner Rodoljub Šabić has especially stressed:
“I have already publicly warned of solutions enabling tricking of the proclaimed protection and I have appealed to the Government to delete them from the law proposal. That primarily pertains to provisions from Article 45 paragraph 2 of the Law, envisaging that the body in charge of personal data protection can have limited access to relevant data, besides else from the reasons of state or public safety. I am satisfied because the Ombudsman shares my opinion, and I appeal to the Government to accept the amendments he has submitted.
It would be a real pity that the law which is otherwise necessary to us, and which is in the biggest part based on good, democratic standards, should due to a couple of bad provisions in one important segment, provide instead of real personal data protection, only its illusion. The citizens would receive “protection” that someone could, at his own free will, eliminate whenever he wishes. And although Article 45 paragraph 2 has been articulated in such a way that it isn't clear even who can eliminate it with just formal reference to the law, it is clear that a very wide, undefined circle of other subjects can use that opportunity. Such solutions for instance, open up the space for performing illegal activities related to distribution of biometrical data, interception of mail, telephone calls, Internet communication, as well as for innumerable other “more benign” illegal “processing of” personal data, without protection of the rights of citizens, that is, with easy elimination of the same.
It isn't good, it is a pity, leaving a bitter impression and it seems almost cynical that the Government, instead of proposing Secret Data Classification Act that is missing for years, is proposing in the context of European standards' implementation, solutions that are much closer to the standards of the “security culture“ from the first half of the last century.
Personal data protection doesn't have to be performed by the Commissioner for Information, it can be also performed by some other independent body. But whichever the body in question might be, that protection has to be comprehensive and effective, and according to international standards it must understand protection from all forms of illegal data processing, regardless who performs that processing, including all state bodies. That is ordered not only by democratic standards, but also by obligations assumed from international contracts. In the presence of such articulated Article 45 paragraph 2, personal data protection has been made very relative, and simultaneously the possibility becomes obvious to efficiently abuse those provisions for making void the authorizations of the Commissioner for Information, the ones he already has, and which are necessary to him, as well as to all other bodies with such authorizations in the whole world, in order to protect one other right, the right to freely access information. Suspicion present in the public that this is the exact reason for entering Article 45 paragraph 2 in the law proposal should be best eliminated by accepting the adequate Ombudsman's amendment.“
