The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection warned all of the responsible ones once again that it would be very bad if, on all of the efforts directed at organizing and conducting the selection for national minority national councils which are important for the affirmation of democratic standards, a shadow of personal data protection right infringement was cast. The Commissioner asked all the responsible ones to take all the necessary measures in order to make sure that this does not occur when compiling special voting lists for the selection of the national minority national councils.

The Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic stated the following in relation to this:

“The Ministry for Human and Minority Rights, as well as the local self-governing bodies who are in charge of compiling the voting lists, are responsible for organizing and conducting the selection for national councils. Only the government bodies are authorized to process personal data, this being a part of the process of compiling separate voting lists. It is illegal for anyone else to, under the pretense of providing help, process personal data, and gather and compile voting and other lists of people who are on the separate voting lists, especially for `private`, political party and other similar data collections based on the photocopies of the requests and of personal documents, or personal signatures with addresses, telephone numbers, and alike. Related to this, even if it is redundant for me to be saying this again, I remind, especially the bodies in charge of the voting lists, that the request for entering the voting list submitted on a separate form is a right of the citizen alone, and that this cannot be done in citizen’s name.

Also, I would like to remind of the fact that processing personal data, especially sensitive data, without a clear, legal framework and explicitly given written consent of the person whose data is being processed, is an activity which is forbidden under the Law on Personal Data Protection (Art. 8) and is punishable as an offence (Art. 57), as well as punishable by Article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Serbia as a criminal act.”