Some days ago I had a meeting with Mr. Thomas Hammarberg, Council of Europe (CoE) Commissioner for Human Rights. As Mr. Hammarberg is a person of exceptional interest, an internationally renowned human rights advocate and a well-meaning and highly cultured conversationalist, this meeting, like so many others before it, has been a pleasant one.
In Serbia, no one was ever punished for illegal personal data processing. This is a rarity, even within the international framework, and it was no coincidence that it prompted one ironic academic joke (Prof. Vlada Vodinelic) – “When it comes to personal data protection, “the statistics” shows that Serbia is, undisputedly, the best. Because, if there were reasons for it, someone had to have been punished.”
Source: "Blic"
The title of this article could be perceived and interpreted as the Commissioner for Information interfering with the day-to-day politics, as a support to the very current efforts and promotion of decentralization. But, this is not the case. It is something completely different.
Source: "Politika"
Recently, for the first time here, the database on the financing of nongovernmental organization from the state budget has been made publicly available. It is available online, on the official internet presentation of the Center for the Development of the Non-Profit Sector. The database includes all of the individual recipients of funding from the «notorious» 481 budget line – grants to NGOs, the amounts paid out, and the state institutions that paid out the aforementioned amounts.
Source: "Vreme"
Why do you ask?
People from whom personal data are requested in any such situation have the right to know why, to whom, in what scope and for what purposes shall they give them, adn whether they are obliged to give the data or whether that depends on their will. Answers to those questions must not be improvised, but must be stipulated by the law.
Source: "Blic"
When at the beginning of April the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has performed supervision regarding abuse of a video record from the video surveillance system (appearance of the record „in the vicinity of Arena" on Internet) „the most interesting“ determined thing was a complete lack of any procedures.
