Data Protection

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.

In the below statement, the HCLU wishes to criticize the Data Protection Ombudsman’s newly issued opinion, that footage of police officers cannot be broadcast by the media without the police officers’ consent.

After two and a half years of litigations, the Supreme Court has reached its final verdict. Budapest Police Headquarters is ordered to issue data on the CCTV systems operated by the police in Budapest. Locations, and all information regarding the operational, financial, technical, legal and personnel aspects, as well as informing of the public and monitoring data is now considered public interest data.

The Ministry of Finance has sent the HCLU the drafts for disclaimer of opinion, which would form the legal confines of how personal data registered in state databases, after anonimization can be used for research.

The Hungarian President of the Republic has referred the draft of the Act on ’Agreement between the European Union and the United States of America on the processing and transfer of passenger name record (PNR) data by air carriers to the United States Department of Homeland Security’ with his comments, to the Hungarian Parliament for reconsideration.

On 6 Oct, 2006 the European Union and the United States finally came to an agreement on sharing air passenger data.

As from 29th August, 2006 only biometric passports accompanied with electronic chips will be issued in Hungary as well. For the time being, only a biometric photo will be stored in the passport.