Info commissioner finds no unauthorised access to politicians’ personal data

Ljubljana – The Information Commission has not established any irregularities in the police’s access to the personal data of a number of politicians, including party and deputy group leaders, the newspaper Dnevnik reported on Saturday.

The Information Commissioner completed on Thursday a procedure to check whether police officers had looked into 44 politicians’ personal data unlawfully.

It launched the procedure last year after several politicians expressed concern that their personal data might have been subject to unauthorised access by police.

The procedure covered the entire year 2019 and the first two months of 2020, and its findings do not differ considerably from the interim findings from last July.

The inspection procedure showed that the personal data of the 44 politicians had been accessed by 700 different police staff.

A single police officer who accessed the personal data of the largest number of politicians, accessed the data of seven politicians.

The majority of police officers who dealt with politicians as part of their job meanwhile processed the personal data of only one politician.

The check also showed that some politicians’ personal data had been accessed by more than 50 or even more than 100 police officers, yet this was as part of the police protection the politicians were provided during various events.

The Information Commissioner launched the inspection at the police in February 2020 after the police was paid an unscheduled visit by a group of MPs from the parliamentary Commission for the Oversight of Intelligence and Security Services.

Its chair at the time, Žan Mahnič of the then opposition but now ruling Democrats (SDS), argued he wanted to see which employees might have been checking the personal data of some MPs in recent weeks.

The Information Commissioner is meanwhile still processing two cases where two police officers are suspected of unauthorised access to personal data.

One case had been reported to the Commissioner by the police itself and the other was detected during the inspection procedure.

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