Source: Danas

Belgrade - Unfortunately, it is more than evident that our political parties are expressing a high degree of irresponsibility towards the rights of citizens. There are numerous examples of unacceptable relationship towards processing citizens’ personal data, says for Danas Commissioner for Information of Public Importance, Rodoljub Sabic, in an interview on the topic whether in this election campaign privacy is more at stake than during the previous ones.

You recently wrote on Twitter that party activism demonstrates a drastic irresponsibility towards the rights of the citizens?

- I have presented the evaluation you are mentioning based on an especially awkward case of family to whose address came the maturation greetings card for a daughter who died several years ago. There are present examples of sending different circulatory party letters in a way showing that the political parties are using data bases which are otherwise owned by the authorities in power, and which have been established for completely different purposes. Sometimes this is about specially delicate databases, for instance, of pregnant women. Also present are the cases in which there is suspicion that the data collected for some other purposes are used for supporting a candidate or a political party.  It is obvious that the abuse of citizen's personal data is intensified during various election campaigns.  We have had especially drastic examples during the previous elections for National Minority Councils, when besides else, the Commissioner has also submitted a larger number of criminal charges due to abuse of personal data and forgeries done by various „activists“. Unfortunately, there are no data whether someone of them has been sentenced, especially sentenced for what he has done.

 Sunday, 5 February 2012

Source: “Blic” daily

Introduction of a personal data protection system still in infancy

- We are literally at the infant stage of introducing a personal data protection system of sorts. We lack legislation relevant for data protection in some vulnerable areas such as biometrics, video surveillance and private security providers, and yet we see it fit to enact new, contentious and risk-ridden legislative instruments like the Law on Electronic Communications – Mr. Rodoljub Sabic, Commissioner for Information of Public Importance, warned in his interview for the “Blic” daily.

Source: Danas

The number of complaints against the republic is at least twice higher than against local authorities, when it comes to the field of ​​free access to public information. There are many more problems at the state than at the local level. However, the fact is that even the amount of interesting information available to the republic authorities is much higher, thus the number of requests for access to them is higher – Rodoljub Sabic, Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, has pointed out for the daily Danas. Sabic has recently been re-elected to another seven-year term of the Commissioner.

How do you assess the situation in the field of the right of free access to information of public importance in the last seven years in Serbia? How much progress has been made?

- I estimate it as much better than seven years ago, but at the same time as not good enough. Progress is evident, as judged by observers from the EU, CoE or OSCE, and according to the monitoring results of independent experts, we have probably made the most progress in the regional framework. However, the achieved level of transparency is still not in accordance with the needs for further democratization of society, especially the need to fight corruption.

Monday, 5 December 2011

Source: “Blic” daily

Flurry of Complaints by Citizens

As the election campaign gathers momentum, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance Mr. Rodoljub Sabic has been receiving an increasing number of citizens’ complaints against party-political activists who visit them at home during their door-to-door campaigns and put them in an awkward situation. What upsets them the most is the fact that those activists have access to their full personal data.

We have recently been receiving frequent phone and electronic enquiries and formal complaints by citizens who see certain actions by party-political activists as a nuisance, violation of privacy or even violation of the Personal Data Protection Law, because the activists appear to have the full set of their personal data – Commissioner Sabic said for “Blic” daily.

Source: "Politika"

“The public should know how the document, on the scope of which depend lives of thousands of people, is prepared“, said Rodoljub Sabic, Commissioner for Information of Public Importance.

The barest minimum of requirements is that the public knows the objectives and the criteria of budget revision. Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic used these words to comment for the “Politika” daily the manner in which national budget was revised. As he said, that process must be much more transparent.

“Thus, if the objective is to reduce the budget deficit, which is completely legitimate, we should know in advance how achievement of that objective is planned. Whether by linear reduction or by some other criteria. And we should know who, why and how much should reduce spending. And that is completely unknown to us and the impression is that the revision is based on the “idea” that  those who have already been saving should save even more, and those who have not been saving do not have to save“, Mr. Sabic is being critical.

Source: "Blic"

The greatest aspect of the problem with regards to the implementation of anti-corruption legislation, such as the Law on the Free Access to Information of Public Importance, the Law on Public Procurement, and the Law on the Anti-Corruption Agency, is a consequence of the fact that the penal provisions of these laws are implemented partly or not at all, even in cases of obvious violations of the aforementioned.

The current “Draft Rulebook on technical requirements for equipment and software for legal interception of electronic communications and keeping data on electronic communications” generated a re-run of the “uproar” which the Draft Bill on Electronic Communications caused in the summer of 2010.

Source: "Danas"

There is no state protection system for corruption whistle-blowers in Serbia.

Belgrade - Whistle-blowers, people who report cases of corruption, do not enjoy protection in Serbia, and are often penalized, dismissed from their jobs and bullied for reporting cases of grave misconduct at their places of work.

Since it  was launched a year ago, more than 800 complaints from all regions in the country have been submitted to the www.pistaljka.rs web portal which allows citizens to report corruption while protecting their identity.

The option for security agencies, acting on an opinion which is not subject to court appraisal, to access information, is a grave breach of the Constitution.

 Interception and keeping information on electronic communications – telephone call listings, to put it simply – can be done by security agencies without any court decision, if the new “Draft Rulebook on technical requirements for equipment and software for legal interception of electronic communications and keeping data on electronic communications” is adopted. Some provisions of this bylaw allow for violations of basic human rights, introduce uncertainties and enable arbitrary interpretations, warns Rodoljub Sabic, Commisisoner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, who forwarded yesterday his opinion on the Rulebook to the Ministry of Culture, Media and Information Society, competent for this area.

Source: "Blic"

At a meeting addressing restitution issues held at the National Assembly recently, in response to complaints put forth by the participants pointing to a lack of transparency in connection with restitution, Deputy Prime Minister Mr. Djelic proclaimed: “You will no longer need Information Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic, we will now post all information on the Internet”.