BRATISLAVA, May 30, (WEBNOVINY) — The Prosecutor General’s Office has lodged a protest against the controversial stance of the Office for Personal Data Protection from May 20 on the census of the population. The office claimed in its stance released on the eve of the census’ start that census forms are not anonymous, as by attaching a sticker with a unique identification code on the form, it will be possible to identity every respondent. The Prosecutor General’s Office demands a cancellation of the stance of the Office for Personal Data Protection and informed the Statistics Office of its steps in the matter. The Statistics Office deems the motion closed, said the Statistics Office’s press secretary Eva Kelemenova after the Statistics Office received the information.
The conflict between the Statistics Office and the Office for Personal Data Protection started on May 20 when the latter released a stance on its website that the upcoming census is not anonymous as the Statistics Office says. According to the stance, the Statistics Office will be able to connect the forms with concrete people thanks to the unique identifier code, which has to be attached to each form. It also urged the Statistics Office to reconsider the duty of attaching the identifier code to the census form and let citizens to freely decide on whether to use the identifier or not. The Statistics Office denied these allegations, saying that the identification code is only a means of preventing duplicate count. The connection of a concrete person with the identification number will be only temporary. Head of the Statistics Office Ludmila Benkovicova added that the code is no novelty, and the Collection of Laws already contains information about the code. The code will be removed from the forms in time, and the forms will be destroyed in line with applicable laws. Moreover, the data is protected by law. The Statistics Office considered the stance manipulative and census-threatening . Moreover, the Statistics Office said that the law on the census was approved three years ago and went through the entire legislative process including interdepartmental review, a participant of which was also the Office for Personal Data Protection.
SITA
