7. July 2021
According to recent announcements, the Polish Personal Data Protection Office (UODO) has indicated that vaccinated individuals participating in certain events cannot be required to disclose evidence of vaccination against COVID-19.
In Poland, one of the regulations governing the procedures related to the prevention of the spread of coronavirus is the Decree of the Council of Ministers of May 6th, 2021 on the establishment of certain restrictions, orders and prohibitions in connection with the occurrence of an epidemic state. Among other things, it sets limits on the number of people who can attend various events which are defined by Sec. 26 para. 14 point 2, para. 15 points 2, 3. The aforementioned provisions concern events and meetings for up to 25 people that take place outdoors or in the premises/building indicated as the host’s place of residence or stay as well as events and meetings for up to 50 people that take place outdoors or in the premises/separate food court of a salesroom. Pursuant to Sec. 26 para. 16, the stated number of people does not include those vaccinated against COVID-19.
In this context the question has arisen how the information about the vaccination can be obtained. As this detail is considered health data which constitutes a special category of personal data referred to in Art. 9 para. 1 GDPR, its processing is subject to stricter protection and permissible if at least one of the conditions specified in para. 2 is met. This is, according to Art. 9 para. 2 lit. i GDPR, especially the case if the processing is necessary for reasons of public interest in the area of public health, such as protecting against serious cross-border threats to health or ensuring high standards of quality and safety of health care and of medicinal products or medical devices, on the basis of Union or Member State law which provides for suitable and specific measures to safeguard the rights and freedoms of the data subject, in particular professional secrecy.
The provisions of the Decree do not regulate the opportunity of requiring the participants in the mentioned events to provide information on their vaccination against COVID-19. Hence, it is not specified who may verify the evidence of vaccination, under what conditions and in what manner. Moreover, “specific measures to safeguard” as referred to in Art. 9 para. 2 lit. i GDPR, cited above, are not provided as well. Therefore, the regulations of the Decree cannot be seen as a legal basis authorizing entities obliged to comply with this limit of persons to obtain such data. Consequently, the data subjects are not obliged to provide it.
Because of this, collection of vaccination information can only be seen as legitimate if the data subject consents to the data submission, as the requirement of Art. 9 para. 2 lit. a GDPR will be fulfilled. Notably, the conditions for obtaining consent set out in Art. 4 para. 11 and Art. 7 GDPR must be met. Thus, the consent must be voluntary, informed, specific, expressed in the form of an unambiguous manifestation of will and capable of being revoked at any time.
18. March 2021
Personal health data are considered a special category of personal data under Art. 9 of the GDPR and are therefore given special protections. A group of IT experts, including members of the German Chaos Computer Club (CCC), has now revealed security gaps in the software for test centres by which more than 136,000 COVID-19 test results of more than 80,000 data subjects have apparently been unprotected on the internet for weeks.
The IT-Security experts’ findings concern the software “SafePlay” of the Austrian company Medicus AI. Many test centres use this software to allocate appointments and to make test results digitally available to those tested. In fact, more than 100 test centres and mobile test teams in Germany and Austria are affected by the recent data breach. These include public facilities in Munich, Berlin, Mannheim as well as fixed and temporary testing stations in companies, schools and daycare centres.
In order to view the test results unlawfully, one only needed to create an account for a COVID-19 test. The URL for the test result contained the number of the test. If this number was simply counted up or down, the “test certificates” of other people became freely accessible. In addition to the test result, the test certificate also contained the name, date of birth, private address, nationality and ID number of the person concerned.
It remains unresolved whether the vulnerabilities have been exploited prior to the discovery by the CCC. The CCC notified both Medius AI and the Data Protection Authorities about the leak which led to a quick response by the company. However, IT experts and Privacy-focused NGOs commented that Medicus AI was irresponsible and grossly negligent with respect to their security measures leading to the potential disclosure of an enormous amount of sensitive personal health data.
25. May 2020
Today we are continuing our miniseries on contact tracing apps and data protection with Part 2 of the series: The EDPB Guideline on the Use of Contact Tracing Tools. As mentioned in Part 1 of our miniseries, many Member States of the European Union have started to discuss using modern technologies to combat the spread of the Coronavirus. Now, the European Data Protection Board (“EDPB”) has issued a new guideline on the use of contact tracing tools in order to give European policy makers guidance on Data Protection concerns before implementing these tools.
The Legal Basis for Processing
In its guideline, the EDPB proposes that the most relevant legal basis for the processing of personal data using contact tracing apps will probably be the necessity for the performance of a task in the public interest, i.e. Art. 6 para. 1 lit. e) GDPR. In this context, Art. 6 para. 3 GDPR clarifies that the basis for the processing referred to in Art. 6 para. 1 lit. e) GDPR shall be laid down by Union or Members State law.
Another possible legal basis for processing could be consent pursuant to Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a) GDPR. However, the controller will have to ensure that the strict requirements for consent to be valid are met.
If the contact tracing application is specifically processing sensitive data, like health data, processing could be based on Art. 9 para. 2 lit. i) GDPR for reasons of public interest in the area of public health or on Art. 9 para. 2 lit. h) GDPR for health care purposes. Otherwise, processing may also be based on explicit consent pursuant to Art. 9 para. 2 lit. a) GDPR.
Compliance with General Data Protection Principles
The guideline is a prime example of the EDPB upholding that any data processing technology must comply with the general data protection principles which are stipulated in Art. 5 GDPR. Contact tracing technology will not be an exeption to this general rule. Thus, the guideline contains recommendations on what national governments and health agencies will need to be aware of in order to observe the data protection principles.
Principle of Lawfulness, fairness and transparency, Art. 5 para. 1 lit. a) GDPR: First and foremost, the EDPB points out that the contact tracing technology must ensure compliance with GDPR and Directive 2002/58/EC (the “ePrivacy Directive”). Also, the application’s algorithms must be auditable and should be regularly reviewed by independent experts. The application’s source code should be made publicly available.
Principle of Purpose limitation, Art. 5 para. 1 lit. b) GDPR: The national authorities’ purposes of processing personal data must be specific enough to exclude further processing for purposes unrelated to the management of the COVID-19 health crisis.
Principles of Data minimisation and Data Protection by Design and by Default, Art. 5 para. 1 lit. c) and Art. 25 GDPR:
- Data processed should be reduced to the strict minimum. The application should not collect unrelated or unnecessary information, which may include civil status, communication identifiers, equipment directory items, messages, call logs, location data, device identifiers, etc.;
- Contact tracing apps do not require tracking the location of individual users. Instead, proximity data should be used;
- Appropriate measures should be put in place to prevent re-identification;
- The collected information should reside on the terminal equipment of the user and only the relevant information should be collected when absolutely necessary.
Principle of Accuracy, Art. 5 para. 1 lit. d) GDPR: The EDPB advises that procedures and processes including respective algorithms implemented by the contact tracing apps should work under the strict supervision of qualified personnel in order to limit the occurrence of any false positives and negatives. Moreover, the applications should include the ability to correct data and subsequent analysis results.
Principle of Storage limitation, Art. 5 para. 1 lit. e) GDPR: With regards to data retention mandates, personal data should be kept only for the duration of the COVID-19 crisis. The EDPB also recommends including, as soon as practicable, the criteria to determine when the application shall be dismantled and which entity shall be responsible and accountable for making that determination.
Principle of Integrity and confidentiality, Art. 5 para. 1 lit. f) GDPR: Contact tracing apps should incorporate appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of processing. The EDPB places special emphasis on state-of-the-art cryptographic techniques which should be implemented to secure the data stored in servers and applications.
Principle of Accountability, Art. 5 para. 2 GDPR: To ensure accountability, the controller of any contact tracing application should be clearly defined. The EDPB suggests that national health authorities could be the controllers. Because contact tracing technology involves different actors in order to work effectively, their roles and responsibilities must be clearly established from the outset and be explained to the users.
Functional Requirements and Implementation
The EDPB also makes mention of the fact that the implementations for contact tracing apps may follow a centralised or a decentralised approach. Generally, both systems use Bluetooth signals to log when smartphone owners are close to each other. If one owner was confirmed to have contracted COVID-19, an alert can be sent to other owners they may have infected. Under the centralised version, the anonymised data gathered by the app will be uploaded to a remote server where matches are made with other contacts. Under the decentralised version, the data is kept on the mobile device of the user, giving users more control over their data. The EDPB does not give a recommendation for using either approach. Instead, national authorities may consider both concepts and carefully weigh up the respective effects on privacy and the possible impacts on individuals rights.
Before implementing contact tracing apps, the EDPB also suggests that a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) must be carried out as the processing is considered likely high risk (health data, anticipated large-scale adoption, systematic monitoring, use of new technological solution). Furthermore, they strongly recommend the publication of DPIAs to ensure transparency.
Lastly, the EDPB proposes that the use of contact tracing applications should be voluntary and reiterates that it should not rely on tracing individual movements but rather on proximity information regarding users.
Outlook
The EDPB acknowledges that the systematic and large scale monitoring of contacts between natural persons is a grave intrusion into their privacy. Therefore, Data Protection is indispensable to build trust, create the conditions for social acceptability of any solution, and thereby guarantee the effectiveness of these measures. It further underlines that public authorities should not have to choose between an efficient response to the current pandemic and the protection of fundamental rights, but that both can be achieved at the same time.
In the third part of the series regarding COVID-19 contact tracing apps, we will take a closer look into the privacy issues that countries are facing when implementing contact tracing technologies.
20. December 2019
The Austrian Regional Court, Landesgericht Feldkirch, has ruled that the major Austrian postal service Österreichische Post (ÖPAG) has to pay an Austrian man 800 Euros in compensation because of violating the GDPR (LG Feldkirch, Beschl. v. 07.08.2019 – Az.: 57 Cg 30/19b – 15). It is one of the first rulings in Europe in which a civil court granted a data subject compensation based on a GDPR violation. Parallel to this court ruling, ÖPAG is facing an 18 Mio Euro fine from the Austrian Data Protection Authorities.
Based on people’s statements in anonymised surveys, ÖPAG had created marketing groups and used algorithms to calculate the probability of the political affinities that people with certain socioeconomic and regional backgrounds might have. ÖPAG then ascribed customers to these marketing groups and thus also stored data about their calculated political affinities. Among these customers was the plaintiff of this case.
The court ruled that this combination is “personal data revealing political opinions” according to Art. 9 GDPR. Since ÖPAG neither obtained the plaintiff’s consent to process his sensitive data on political opinions nor informed him about the processing itself, ÖPAG violated the plaintiff’s individual rights.
While the plaintiff demanded 2.500 Euros in compensation from ÖPAG, the court granted the plaintiff only a non-material damage compensation of 800 Euros after weighing up the circumstances of the individual case.
The case was appealed and will be tried at the Higher Regional Court Innsbruck.