DELETED - 8998 MESSAGE FOLDER

 Filenews 19 August 2020 -Vasos Vassiliou

Millions of messages sent by citizens at the time of the restrictive measures to the number 8998 in order to obtain permission to leave the house have already been deleted and that is why the Commissioner for the Protection of Personal Data, Irene Loizidou Nikolaidou, has been given an assurance.

Along with the messages, the personal data, which citizens filled out in order to obtain an "exit permit", has also been deleted. It is worth noting that there were weekends where about 500,000 messages were sent. The assurance of destruction of citizens' personal data was given by the three companies to which the messages were sent and which approved or rejected the requests.

The three companies are Cyta, Epic and Primetel. Data Commissioner Irene Loizidou Nikolaidou, asked about this by "F", said that her office requested information from the three companies, who in a letter assured them that they had destroyed the personal data sent to them by the citizens. The message/request of each citizen to leave (for walking, shopping, visiting a doctor, vulnerable groups, etc.) did not end up in any government service, as many thought, but in the company with which he was contracted or with a mobile phone telecard and the answer was standardised, which is why the answer (approval/rejection) came almost immediately. In other words, if someone did not exceed the number of expenses allowed or there were no incorrect information, the request would be approved.

Ms Nikolaidou told "F" that initially the data was kept by the companies for 72 hours and if there was no complaint from the Police about a violation of the law, then the data had to be deleted, otherwise it was kept as evidence. Along the way, the 72 hours of data storage were limited to 48 hours. It should be noted that on the basis of rejections of requests or traffic without approval by the three companies, several out-of-court cases were issued to citizens and in some of these cases also concerned public opinion.

Citizen's approval

Deputy Minister of Research and Innovation Kyriakos Kokkinos had explained that when every citizen signs a contract with any provider (mobile operator), he gives his approval to keep his messages or calls for a long time. It was also made clear that under the contract signed by the State with the companies, they were obliged after the end of the state of emergency to delete all messages. Mrs Nikolaidou had made it clear to "F" that she did not accept the creation of a single register in which all messages were registered, because then there would be a question of personal data breach.

Privacy

Precisely because the issue of citizens' personal data was addressed, the European Commission's 'Recommendation' on the use of mobile applications and data to deal with COVID-19 recognised the need for data security, privacy and, in general, the need to respect the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Parliament and the European Affairs Office had indicated that Parliament should be informed of the safeguarding of citizens' constitutional rights, respect for the principles of necessity and proportionality of the measure and the time of possible applications, adequate information to the public and the involvement of the Office of the Commissioner for The Protection of Personal Data".