Data protection

This question can be interesting in respect of the latest change in Hungarian health data processing: doctors performing health on the workplace tests are obliged to upload the entire files to the common health space where access is not as limited as it should be. The concrete case adjudicated by the European Court of Justice concerns the processing of COVID vaccination data, also based on national law. For processing based on a legal obligation to which the controller is subject, Member Statesmay maintan and introduce specific provisions determining more specific requirements and can also describe features of the processing, including measures to ensure fair and lawful processing. Processing of special categories of data (including health data) for reasons of substantial public interest (in any area) or of public interest in the area of public health requires that the élaw should provide for suitable and specific measures to safeguard the fundamental rights and interests of the data ...

We hear most often about the surveillance by security services of the U.S. but also European states need to get information about what criminal organisations and terrorists plan and who participate in them. On the other hand the total surveillance state raises justified suspicions, in particular in post-communist countries. Moreover, information does not always come from direct surveillance by the state, government agencies would also like to have access to the most possible data collected and stored by private actors for their own purposes. Although processing of data for prevention and fighting crime does not belong under the general Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), neither under the e-privacy directive, the collection of data by private organisations does. On Wednesday the 15 th January the opinion of the advocate general of the European Court of Justice (ECoJ) was published in three such cases (joint cases C-511/18 and C-512/18, C-623/17 and C-520/18). A French, a British an...

It is a little more than one year that the General Data Protection Regulation entered into force. The 22 nd May 2019, three days before the first anniversary, a press release [i] by the European Commission summarised certain statistical data [ii] on the year, including a Eurobarometer survey [iii] and the most important indicators of compliance, complaints and data breach notifications. Just two months later, the Commission has adopted the Communication on its session the 24 th July [iv] entitled: “Data protection rules as a trust - enabler in the EU and beyond – taking stock”. In this Communication, significant thought is given to the international dimension. On the other hand, some new judicial developments also concern the international dimension, mainly transfer of personal data to the United States. The new, clearer and somewhat stricter data protection rules in Europe exert an important influence on international relations, they are sometimes accused of enabling protect...

The new General Data Protection  Regulation - as opposed to its predecessor, the Data Protection Directive ( Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data ), which is actually in force till the 24th May 2018, has to be applied not only by companies and other organisation in the European Union but also by a controller or a processor not established in the Union processing of personal data of data subjects who are in the Union. Recital 23 explains a little more: The mere accessibility of a website in the Union, of an email address or of other contact details, or the use of a language generally used in the third country where the controller is established, is insufficient to ascertain such intention, factors such as the use of a language or a currency generally used in one or more Member States with the possibility of ord...