GYLA has applied to the State Inspector’s Office of Georgia with a request to respond to the fact of unlawful processing of personal data by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The analysis of administrative proceedings has revealed the cases of illegal processing of personal data by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In handling administrative offences, the Ministry of Interior retrieves information from Information Technology Database (info.police.ge) and submits it to the court for imposing administrative sanctions. In most cases, the information is more than one year old.
The retention of the information on an administrative violation for several years contradicts the existing legislation, which was amended based on the case successfully finalized by GYLA in the Constitutional Court in 2017. The Constitutional Court ruled unconstitutional the life-long storage of information on violations in the Unified Information Database in an electronic format. Following the decision, it was determined that storing records on administrative offences for an indefinite time in an electronic format in the Unified Information Database shall be inadmissible. However, some records need to be stored for a period of one year. Nevertheless, it has been confirmed that the Ministry of Internal Affairs still retains information for at least one year in practice.
GYLA urges the Office of the State Inspector to examine the practice of processing personal data on administrative violations by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and take legal measures to eliminate the practice that is inconsistent with the law.