Press Releases - Archive

When the medical documentation of a citizen from Odzaci appeared on the Internet and in the media, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, initiated and conducted the procedure of supervising the implementation of the Personal Data Protection Law in the Odzaci Health Center; the supervision procedure confirmed that the documentation containing the data on the health condition of the patient was kept in a completely unsafe manner and made available to an unlimited number of visitors to the outpatient clinic, which resulted in the appearance of the medical documentation with particularly sensitive personal citizen’s data on social networks and in the media completely unprotected, dumped, available to anyone.

With a view to the Draft Law on the National DNA Registry, which was established by the Government and submitted to the National Assembly for adoption, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection sent letters to the chairmen of the parliamentary committees of Defense and Internal Affairs, the Human and Minority Rights and the Gender Equality Committee.

Commissioner pointed out that he gave his opinion to the proponents during the Law drafting, whereby he presented the flaws and inconsistencies, as well as the mismatch between the text of the Law and the basic European and international standards in the field of genetic data processing, including the lack of harmonization with the Council of Europe Recommendation, No (92)1 on genetic privacy, and the non-compliance with standards established in the practice of the European Court of Human Rights.

Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection ordered the First Basic Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade to provide a copy of the reports which had been submitted by the Police Directorate of the Serbian Interior Ministry to the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade, to the journalist of the Criminal Investigation and Corruption Network KRIK, in connection with the case of demolition in Hercegovacka Street.

Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, Rodoljub Sabic, and Minister of State Administration and Local Self-government, Branko Ruzic, discussed today the importance of cooperation between executive authorities and independent bodies in order to develop a citizen open-administration-service.

The Minister informed the Commissioner that the Draft Law on Amendments to the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance is in the final stage of development, and accordingly they concluded that it is good to expect it enter into parliamentary procedure by the end of the year.

The Commissioner assessed that the Ministry of State Administration and Local Self-Government had a proper attitude towards the obligations to the public, also pointing to the need to improve the work of the Administrative Inspectorate as to have a more efficient implementation of the law and the responsibility against the law violators.