On the occasion of the International Day of Privacy and Data Protection, the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data in Bosnia and Herzegovina announced that in the time of new technologies and developments that are taking place all over the world in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is necessary to adopt a new law on the protection of personal data.
Data Protection Day has been marked in Europe every January 28 since 2007, and the Council of Europe celebrates it for the 18th time. This day also marks the anniversary of Convention 108 for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data, which was opened for signature by all countries on January 28, 1981.
The importance of exercising the basic right to the protection of personal data becomes unquestionable, and the purpose of personal data protection is to ensure the protection of private life and other human rights and fundamental freedoms in the collection, processing and use of personal data.
The right to privacy has grown in importance throughout history and adapted its content to social circumstances. To the classic spheres of privacy, such as home, family or correspondence, new areas are added where individuals also expect privacy protection, for example, large databases of personal data. Globally, today there is an increasing effort to find a common data protection framework. In Europe, it is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and soon it will be joined by Convention 108+. Unfortunately, Bosnia and Herzegovina has not yet adopted the new Personal Data Protection Law harmonized with the GDPR.
Therefore, on this year’s Data Protection Day, the Agency invites the competent institutions to start the procedure of adopting a new law harmonized with the GDPR. Also, this is a call to citizens to be careful when providing their own documents that contain personal data, as well as other information about private life on social networks and various Internet services.
Dragoljub Reljić, director of the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data (AZLP) of Bosnia and Herzegovina, reminded that Bosnia and Herzegovina signed the Stabilization and Association Agreement and thereby assumed the obligation to harmonize its regulations with the regulations of the European Union and relevant international conventions.
“From the beginning, awareness of the protection of personal data had to be raised because this right did not exist in our previous system. In these 15 years, thousands of decisions, opinions and inspections were carried out. However, with the development and raising of awareness, some new problems and challenges that the Agency with its existing legal solutions and capacities can hardly solve. We are all witnesses to the development of information technologies, digitization processes, mass use of video and audio surveillance, artificial intelligence. All these new challenges must be solved in the following way. The first and basic the condition is the adoption of a new law on the protection of personal data. This law on the protection of personal data will solve, that is, it will set certain preconditions for us to solve the problems that arise as a consequence of these causes that I have mentioned,” stated Reljić.
He believes that this law must be harmonized with Convention 108+, GDPR and the police directive.
“We must have the same level of protection as other countries have. As Serbia, North Macedonia, the countries of the European Union have… We cannot allow our citizens to have a lower level of legal protection or that some right that they have in the EU is not prescribed by law. or that they don’t have an independent supervisory body they can turn to. I expect and hope that a new law on the protection of personal data will be passed,” Reljić pointed out.
Speaking about how secure the personal data of BiH citizens are, he said that absolute security does not exist.
“We have an existing law, which was very innovative and provided that protection, but in 2016 the GDPR was passed. We are talking about eight years later,” added Reljić.
Samira Champara, assistant director in the sector for inspection supervision, complaints and the central register, presented the activities of the Agency in the past year.
“We received 290 complaints from citizens who complained to us about various procedures. This data is an indicator that citizens’ awareness is increasing. The largest number of complaints were filed against legal and natural persons, followed by public bodies. these procedures are primarily related to video surveillance, then to direct marketing, publication of personal data on the official websites of various bodies and the provision of data to a third party,” explained Čampara.
She stated that the Agency initiated 100 proceedings ex officio in the past year.
“We didn’t solve all the complaints procedures ex officio in the past year because we don’t have enough capacity,” said Campara, AA writes.
