Is the Commissioner responsible for overseeing the implementation and enforcement of the Law on Personal Data Protection in relation to a daily newspaper which disclosed in an article the particularly sensitive data of a person indicted for robbery and does the Commissioner have the authority to determine how the journalist in question obtained such information?

No. Namely, the provision of Article 29, paragraph 1 of the Law on Personal Data Protection provides that processing by journalists and other media workers for the sole purpose of publication by mass media, with the exception of processing for advertising purposes, is governed by the provisions of Articles 3, 5 and 8, items 1) to 5) and Articles 46 and 47 of this Law. This means the Commissioner does not have the jurisdiction to conduct an inspection of a daily newspaper in connection with the contentious article, inter alia because Articles 54, 55, 56 and 57 of the Law on Personal Data Protection do not apply in this particular case.

In this specific case, all issues pertaining to the contentious newspaper article are governed by the Law on Public Information (Official Gazette of RS, Nos. 43/2003, 61/2005, 71/2009, 89/2010 – Decisions of the Constitutional Court and 41/2011 – Decision of the Constitutional Court), which inter alia specifies the conditions under which information about a person's private life can be published (Articles 43-45), the means of protecting the right to privacy (Article 46) etc.