If the use of biometric surveillance is not completely banned, before the infrastructure for it is installed, it will be very difficult to prevent its consequences.
Also, no one is protected from information leaks from institutions, because the state authorities do not react even when your ID photo is on the front pages of magazines where you are labeled as a member of a criminal group. These were the key topics on the first day of the “Privacy Week”, an event organized by the organization Partners Serbia.
Last year, there have been several serious initiatives and legislative processes in Serbia that represent a reason to discuss the protection of the right to privacy in Serbia, says the Executive Director of Partners Serbia, Ana Toskic Cvetinovic. “The implementation of the Law on Social Cards has begun, which prescribes for the artificial intelligence algorithm to process about 140 different types of data of citizens and make an assessment of whether they can be recipients of social welfare. During the first six months of the implementation of the Law, about 20,000 people were excluded from social welfare without any transparency on how the algorithm operates and what is the logic behind it”, says Toskic Cvetinovic.
She also stated that the second attempt was made in order to provide a legal basis for biometric surveillance through the Draft Law on Internal Affairs, as well as that there were several hacker attacks that potentially compromised citizens’ data. In addition to all that, the practice of misuse of personal data by the media for the sake of profit continued, says Toskic Cvetinovic.
She adds that in the coming period special attention should be directed to the processing of data by the public sector, through various types of digital services that are being developed and through the use of artificial intelligence.
Also, further work needs to be done on protection of privacy of marginalized groups, on which
data processing and tracking models are being tested, in Serbia and globally.