In the letter addressed to the Anti-Corruption Agency, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has estimated ''special conditions'' for access to documents imposed on the Commissioner by the Agency, as an unacceptable and legally unsustainable act which is the expression of ignorance or disregard of a number of relevant legal facts or something even worse.
The Commissioner has thus reacted to the Agency's document via which it informs him, regarding his request for production of documents so that he could examine them, that: "it can be concluded that certain data from the documents from the case relating to the control of assets and income of the Mayor Sinisa Mali constitute ''SECRET DATA'' in terms of Article 38 of the Law on Data Secrecy, whose protection requires the Commissioner to access them personally and on the Agency's premises, with prior notice."
Such an action of the Agency is not only a precedent in the many years of work of the Commissioner, but it is generally contrary to the standards of the necessary and essential cooperation between state authorities. Cooperation between authorities is essential and normally includes the distribution, i.e. on request of the competent authority, and the submission of various documents. Of course, often these documents are classified, confidential. If it were not so, provisions of the Law on Data Secrecy relating to the storing, transferring and submission of such documents, as well as appropriate rules for handling classified documents in the office would be meaningless.
However, even if we could disregard this, the condition expressed in the sentence: "requires the Commissioner to access them personally and on the Agency's premises, with prior notice" is incomprehensible. It is common knowledge, and the Agency knows this as well, that the Office of the Commissioner employs a great number of associates (24) which are certified for access to information classified as "SECRET". In this situation, the requirement that the Commissioner ''accesses the data personally'' is absurd.
Finally, the Agency should have known that according to the provisions of Article 25 of the Law on Data Secrecy, a public authority is obliged to declassify data or documents under the decision of the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection passed in appellate proceedings.
In particular, the inevitable question is whether the said documents or data are actually classified as "SECRET" in accordance with and in the manner prescribed by the Law on Data Secrecy. The more so, because the Agency only states that it "can be concluded," but in no way proves, that the documents are actually classified.
Assuming that the documents were indeed classified as such, we have additional reasons for concern. Namely, pursuant to Article 14 of the Law on Data Secrecy the level of classification "SECRET" is related to information whose disclosure would lead to "grave damage to the interests of the Republic of Serbia", and it is difficult to even imagine how disclosure of information about the income and property of any officials, including the Mayor, could threaten the national interests to such a "dramatic" degree.
The Commissioner has warned the Agency that its actions prevent the Commissioner from the exercise of his statutory powers, which constitutes a violation of the law, and urged it to promptly comply with his request for production of the documents.
