Press Releases - Archive

The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection said the Announcement by the Municipal Police of the City of Belgrade of 25 September 2016 titled "Everything we do is within the law" (which grossly misrepresents the Commissioner's Warning issued after an inspection conducted pursuant to reports of inadmissible recording of citizens or police officers) was an irresponsible attempt to mislead the public.

It is downright outrageous for the Municipal Police to label the inspection conducted by the Commissioner in accordance with the Law and the Warning he issued on that occasion as "tendentious", even though the relevant facts had been established by the Commissioner's authorised officers and recorded in the Report signed by a representative of the Municipal Police.

After conducting an inspection of compliance with the Law on Personal Data Protection by the Municipal Police of the City of Belgrade (as an internal organizational unit within the City Administration of the City of Belgrade as a single authority), the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection sent a letter to the mayor of Belgrade.

Enclosed with the letter, the Commissioner issued the mayor with a Warning addressed to the Municipal Police in which he highlighted the identified irregularities and ordered the Municipal Police to notify him within 15 days of the measures and activities it intends to undertake in order to remedy those irregularities.

The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has sent a request to the Serbian Government to enforce, in accordance with its duty under Article 28 paragraph 4 of the Law on Free Access to Information, the Commissioner's Decision by which he ordered the City Institute of Expert Witnesses in Belgrade to provide the Belgrade-based daily newspaper Danas with the requested information and documents which show the number of cases in which forensic evidence was presented by expert witness L.M., the object of her forensic analysis in each of those cases, the litigated amounts and the parties in those cases.

The Commissioner passed this Decision nearly two months ago. Although the Decision is final, binding and enforceable in accordance with the law, the City Institute of Expert Witnesses did not comply with it within the specified period, even after the Commissioner imposed fines on it in the total amount of RSD 200,000 at the request of the information requester and after the Administrative Court dismissed as inadmissible the legal action filed by the City Institute of Expert Witnesses against the Commissioner's Decision.

In connection with the amendment to the Decision on Public Route Transport which the Assembly of the City of Belgrade passed yesterday, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection sent letters (identical in content) to the Mayor of the City of Belgrade and the Chairperson of the Belgrade City Assembly.

The Commissioner focused in particular on those parts of the Decision which granted ticket inspectors in public transport the power to process personal data by verifying citizens' identity even without the presence of a police officer or a municipal police officer and stipulated that citizens have a duty to provide the requested information.