The global public health crisis has shifted the focus of decisions from the rights of individuals to the interests of the community. In circumstances when the control of a pandemic is the primary goal of the entire public, the protection of personal data is exposed to a particularly difficult test.

Only in Serbia, since the declaration of the state of emergency on March 15, several serious violations of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, laws and international documents have been recorded. Official state bodies published sensitive data on the health status of the deceased, while the movement of citizens were monitored by processing metadata from their mobile devices - without respecting the basic principles of protection, ie without a legal basis that would justify the suspension of these principles.

The most serious incident was discovered by SHARE Foundation researchers by a search on the Internet, when it was established that access data for the information system intended for processing sensitive data of citizens related to the pandemic were publicly available on the website of a health institution.

Therefore, the SHARE Foundation, in cooperation with the Belgrade Open School, Partners for Democratic Change Serbia (Partners Serbia), Citizen’s Association Atina, Association Da se zna and A11 - Initiative for Economic and Social Rights, has developed a concise and clear manual on data protection during a pandemic.

The basic principles of the European legal framework, with which the regulations in Serbia are harmonized, are explained from the perspective of data processing of citizens in extraordinary circumstances. The legal documents adopted by the state administration for the purpose of more efficient management of the health crisis were analyzed from the point of view of those areas in which personal data protection currently suffers the greatest pressure of conflicting public interest: health, media, work environment and mass surveillance.

A particularly important result of the legal-technical analysis is the map of data flows through the network of public institutions and authorities, in order to collect and process data on tested, infected, hospitalized, cured and deceased citizens, as well as data on their contacts.

Human rights organizations assess that the urgency of public health protection does not provide a justified basis for lowering the protection of personal data in the case of most actors. It is rightly expected that the repeal of those intrusive measures that were necessary will soon be one of the first signs that the fight to suppress the pandemic has ended successfully.

The guide is freely available in its integral form on the website pandemija.mojipodaci.rs, and is distributed to the general public through traditional and social media. Organizations continue to monitor good and bad practices during the pandemic and, as appropriate, the Guide is open to introducing new types of injuries and appropriate guidelines for legal action.

The project "Reclaiming privacy: A Tool to Fight Oppression" is implemented with the support of the Delegation of the European Union to the Republic of Serbia through the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR).

The news was taken from the website of the SHARE Foundation.