Journalists and a number of NGOs launched a campaign to support investigative journalism. The authors aim to sensitize the public opinion, the authorities and development partners to the abuses that the state institutions commit when interpreting the legislation on personal data protection.
Petru Macovei, executive director of the Association of Independent Press, has told IPN there are many cases when the access to information is blocked for the reason that the asked for information contains personal data. Most of the times, it is about the misinterpretation of the legislation.
“I will give you several concrete examples. Information about the sending of prosecutors to work in particular regions was asked from the Prosecutor General’s Office. The answer was that this is information of a personal character. We asked from Parliament the list of persons who benefited from support on the part of the state and had English language courses paid with public funds. We were told that these are personal data. We asked “Moldova’s Post Office” to provide information about biddings staged with this company’s money for renovating post offices. We were told that these are personal data,” stated Petru Macovei.
According to him, a lot of editorial staffs, especially those that deal with investigations, meet with such problems. Thus, the goal of this campaign is to make common cause with journalists who experience such problems and to warn the authorities about the fact that it is inadmissible to erroneously and abusively interpret the legislation on personal data.
A public debate on the issue will be held within the campaign during the next few weeks. This will involve national and foreign experts. “The journalists proposed some forms of protest such as to classify the news items about politicians. Instead of writing the name of a politician, we should write only the abbreviation so as to show our protest at the lack of reaction on the part of the authorities to the things that we reported during the last two years,” said the executive director of the Association of Independent Press.
The authors of the campaign also intend to transmit official letters to the European Commission and Moldova’s development partners to inform them about abuses in interpreting the legislation. Meetings with European ambassadors in Moldova will take place within the campaign.
Petru Macovei also said that they will formulate amendments to the Law on Personal Data so as not to only warn about the problem, but to also try to offer the MPs legislative solutions and exclude these blockages.
The period of the campaign hasn’t been set. Protests and awareness-raising events will be staged as long as need be.
