The Association of Disabled Persons filed a request for free access to information of public importance to the city administration requiring photocopies of lists of beneficiaries of personal disability allowance for war and peace veterans and of beneficiaries of family disability allowance for the purpose of reconciliation of records.
Acting on an appeal filed by the Association against the failure of public authorities to act, in accordance with Article 236 of the Law on General Administrative Proceedings, the Commissioner assessed whether the request is justified and found that it should be rejected on the following grounds:
What is undisputable is that the appellant’s request submitted to the public authority pertains to information created in operations or in connection with operations of the public authority and that the public authority does not deny it holds such information, as well as that such information as information of public importance within the meaning of Article 2 of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance is a legitimate object of interest of an appellant or the public.
On the other hand, the type of information in this specific case is such that it undoubtedly contains personal data within the meaning of Article 3 of the Law on Personal Data Protection (“Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia”, Nos. 97/08 and 104/09-other law), the access to which could violate the right to privacy and other personal rights, and which can be the reason to restrict the right to free access to information of public importance in accordance with Article 14 of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance.
Article 14 of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance stipulates that public authorities will not enable a requester to exercise the right to access information of public importance if it would thereby violate the right to privacy, the right to reputation or any other right of a person, except in the cases referred to in items 1), 2) and 3) of the said Article, i.e. if a person for whom information is requested gave his/her consent, if the information pertains to a person, an occurrence or an event of interest for the public or if a person’s behavior, particularly regarding his/her private life, gave rise to a request for information.
Taking into account that the appellant in this case requested photocopies of lists of beneficiaries of personal disability allowance for war and peace veterans and of beneficiaries of family disability allowance for the purpose of reconciliation of records, the Commissioner found that in this specific case the information requested is personal data within the meaning of the Law on Personal Data Protection, more specifically particularly sensitive data referred to in Article 16, paragraph 1 of this Law which can be processed only with express consent from a person to whom they pertain or in cases stipulated by he law, and since the quoted exception referred to in Article 14 of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance cannot be applied, access to this information should not be allowed. This Commissioner’s opinion would not jeopardize the requester’s right to access information pertaining to funds from the budget paid as disability allowance and similar information, i.e. depersonalized lists containing the amounts of payments, which was obviously not an object of interest of the appellant in this specific case; the object of interest were personal data on beneficiaries for record-keeping purposes.
(from the Commissioner’s ruling, No.:07-00-00264/2010-03 of 10 February 2011)
