In connection with the great interest of the public in relation to the information on the publication of decisions for persons who should be in isolation on the website of the State Sanitary Inspectorate and in the Official Gazette of the Republic of North Macedonia, the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data issues the following announcement:
Personal data is any information that refers to an identified natural person or an identifiable natural person (subject of personal data), i.e. the name, surname, address and data on the health care received that reveal information about the health of citizens constitute personal data. At the same time special categories of personal data are personal data that reveal racial or ethnic origin, political views, religious or philosophical beliefs or membership in trade unions, as well as genetic data, biometric data, data relating to health or data on the sex life or sexual orientation of the natural person, while data relating to health are personal data related to the physical or mental health of the natural person, including data on the received health care that reveal information about his health.
Processing of special categories of personal data is prohibited, and as an exception, they may be processed in accordance with the exceptions established in the Law on Personal Data Protection (Article 13).
Personal data processing operations (collection, storage, publication…) can be performed in accordance with the principles established in the Law on Personal Data Protection.
The Agency for the Protection of Personal Data submitted a Notice to the State Sanitary and Health Inspectorate regarding the publication of decisions for persons who should be in isolation on the website of the State Sanitary Inspectorate and in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia.
In connection with the publication of the decisions for the persons who should be in isolation on the website of the State Sanitary Inspectorate, there is no legal basis for publishing them on the website and in the Official Gazette of the Republic of North Macedonia.
This is especially so because the solutions for people who need to be in isolation due to the COVID-19 coronavirus also contain special categories of personal data, i.e. data related to health, which personal data enjoy special protection according to the regulations for the protection of personal data and for them not exceptions to the rule prohibiting the processing of special categories of personal data may apply.
As a result of this, publication of the decisions for persons who should be in isolation due to the COVID-19 coronavirus on the website of the State Sanitary and Health Inspectorate for the purpose of electronic delivery of the decisions, is not correlated with the principle of legality, fairness and transparency and the principle of the minimum amount of data established in the Law on the Protection of Personal Data.
The method of delivery of a letter is determined in the Law on the General Administrative Procedure, whereby delivery by electronic means could be performed by fulfilling and applying the conditions established in the provisions of Article 85 of the Law on the General Administrative Procedure, in which case it will be necessary to foresee and apply appropriate technical and organizational measures according to the degree of risk of personal data processing operations in accordance with the regulations for the protection of personal data.
Hence, any natural person who needs to access their isolation solution will only have the opportunity to access and download their own solution, while not having the ability to access, view and process data contained in the isolation solutions of others. natural persons. When delivering the isolation solutions electronically (downloading the document from a server designated by the public authority), technical and integrated protection of personal data must be applied, i.e. appropriate technical and organizational measures must be applied to ensure the security of the processing of personal data, proportional to the purpose of the processing, according to the risk.
Skopje, February 3, 2022
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