TI BIH wrote to the Agency for Personal Data Protection: Protect citizens whose data has been misused to vote from abroad

Publishing the list of voters registered to vote from abroad is in the public interest, as it revealed numerous irregularities and was the only way to identify abuses in the registration process, which the Agency apparently neglected when making the decision to ban its publication.

Banja Luka, 10 October 2020 – Transparency International in BIH (TI BIH) informed the Agency for Personal Data Protection of BIH that it has recently received numerous reports from citizens whose data have been misused to vote from abroad. After the CEC made public the list of voters registered for this type of voting for the first time, many citizens discovered that their data had been misused, in a way that they were registered to vote abroad without their knowledge, and the list helped the media discover numerous cases of mass abuse. The CEC data on over 3,500 complaints received in the first days after the publication of the list clearly shows that this is a mass phenomenon with the intention of manipulating the election process, so the Agency must investigate these cases and provide mechanisms to verify and detect identity theft.

The responsibility of this institution was further increased after the decision ordering the CEC to remove the Excerpt from the Central Voters’ List from abroad. Given that the publication of this list revealed numerous irregularities, and was the only way to determine abuses in the registration process, it is clear that the public of the list is in the public interest, which the Agency obviously did not appreciate when making this decision. Therefore, TI BiH calls on the Agency to urgently find mechanisms to protect citizens, and taking into account that there are only a little more than a month left until the local elections.

According to the reports that TI BIH has received so far through the Center for Free Legal Aid, it can be concluded that personal data of citizens are most often misused in the election process by individuals, who in the past collected data from citizens misleading them. in connection with the actual purpose of their processing.

The Election Law clearly states that the Central Voters’ List and excerpts from it are public documents. On the other hand, the goal of the BiH Law on Personal Data Protection is, among other things, to ensure the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, which include the exercise of suffrage, which is serious for the misuse of citizens’ data questioned.