The Hungarian government came up with a new proposal, which talks about the setting up of a National Security Informational and Criminal Analysis Center. This new government body could freely roam about in other government databases and could collect and retain our data without any restriction. The monster feeding on our personal data is digging privacy’s grave even deeper.

Eötvös Károly Policy Institute, Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and Hungarian Helsinki Committee informed the President of the European Commission on the failure of the Hungarian lawmaker to fulfill its obligation to guarantee the complete independence of the Data Protection Commissioner. Hungary therefore breached its duty arising from EU law.

The draft law – currently before the Parliament – on Data Protection and Freedom of Information will replace the independent Data Protection and Freedom of Information Commissioner with an administrative authority. This change will seriously diminish the level of privacy protection and weaken the right to access to information in Hungary.

The video circulating on the internet which depicts the fight in Gyöngyöspata last week between local Romas and paramilitary group members deserves attention not only because of the evident racial issue. After viewing the leaked video from the CCTV, it is clear that the police, besides recording video images, are also recording audio without legal authorization. The HCLU is turning to the Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information to investigate the matter.

In pursuance of the decision of the Municipal Court of Tatabánya, the indirectly state-owned Vértesi Power Plant Co. is obliged to hand over its contracts with System Consulting Co. from 2008, the documents of the internal inquisition carried out in the case of privatization and power trading of System Consulting Co., substantiating the damage suits and criminal accusation of Vértesi Power Plant in the spring of 2009, and the figures in connection with the costs of the internal inquisition to Tamás Bodoky, journalist, represented by HCLU.

The census is an event of utmost importance for Hungarian society due to its significance for long-term planning of social policies. However, the census is also an event which deeply affects the constitutional right of data protection. As everyone will be counted in October 2011, Hungarian Civil Liberties Union drew up some critical observations from the perspective of data protection.

K-Monitor Association and the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union organized a project on Legal Regulation of Public Interest Disclosures in Post-Soviet Democracies. The two Hungarian NGOs created a virtual conference on whistleblowing protection with an interactive discussion surface in English as well as an online content in form of this website. For the implementation of the “virtual conference”, K-Monitor and HCLU also invited NGOs working in the field of anti-corruption from Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Poland, Moldova and Hungary to take part in the project.

More than 100 organizations from 23 European countries last week asked EU Commissioners Malmström, Reding and Kroes in a joint letter to “propose the repeal of the EU requirements regarding data retention in favor of a system of expedited preservation and targeted collection of traffic data".

The Hungarian Constitutional Court declared several rules of the act regulating the criminal registry (hereinafter: CRA) unconstitutional. The Court nullified rules on the temporal scope of the registry, on data transfer from the registry and on rules of dactyloscopic and photo registry.

The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union has filed its complaint with the Constitutional Court, requesting the ex-post examination for unconstitutionality and the annulment of the data retention provisions of the Act C of 2003 on electronic communications.

The Central European Universitz Center For Media and Communication Studies (CMCS) and the CEU Department of Public Policy (DPP) invite you to a public lecture entitled "The Privacy Advocates: Resisting the Spread of Surveillance” by Colin Bennett (Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Victoria, British Columbia)

This week, members of Parliament will debate draft no:T/5312, on the protection of humangenetic data and regulations on humangenetic examinations and research. Read on for our opinion.