The Information and Data Protection Commissioner, Mr. Besnik Dervishi was invited for an interview on Voice of America’s Albanian section.
To the question related to the enforcement of the right to information law, he stated: “on the one hand, it could be viewed as a negative indication of the situation, alternatively it could be considered to be a positive indication of increased awareness of the citizens, the media, mainly the investigative media, and notably the civil society. Were public authorities to perform perfectly, they would provide the information and there would be no complaints made to the Commissioner’s Office; we nevertheless identify shortcoming, deficiencies, or other causes which we reflect in the report presented to the Parliament of Albania.”
With respect to guaranteeing the right to personal data protection and the enforcement of the relevant legislation, the Commissioner stressed that: “in our capacity of supervisory institution, we are very concerned, however the citizens should be concerned too. This should help raise the awareness of each and every one of us, as we lack personal data and identity protection culture. The other aspect of it are the public (institutions) and private controllers’ conformance with the requirements for lawful processing of personal data, in accordance with the established legal principles and criteria. Political parties are controllers as well, hence the personal data processing activities that they carry out should also abide by the regulatory framework. The Commissioner has rendered a number of acts which are publicly available on the topic of the recent data breaches violating our citizens’ personal data. It is precisely what our institution does: monitoring, detecting violations and when appropriate, imposes sanctions, and as a last resort order blocking of personal data processing operation when such processing constitutes a serious violation”.
Full interview (only in Albanian)