Jan 10, 2022, 20:08 pm
The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) instructed the law enforcement agency Europol to delete the personal data of individuals who have no established link with criminal activity, concluding an inquiry started in April 2019.
The EDPS initiated the inquiry based on concerns that Europol’s data processing activities were going beyond its mandate and breaching its data protection rules.
These concerns were confirmed as the Supervisor concluded its investigation in September 2020, admonishing Europol to address the outstanding structural issues. For the supervisory authority, the EU agency went against the data minimisation principle by including personal data from people with no proven relation to criminal activity.
Moreover, the EDPS deemed that these data processing practices went against the principle of storage limitation, which decrees that data will only be maintained for as long as strictly necessary. The privacy watchdog considers that Europol has failed to make necessary changes to ensure compliance in both cases.
“Europol has dealt with several of the data protection risks identified in the EDPS’ initial inquiry. However, there has been no significant progress to address the core concern that Europol continually stores personal data about individuals when it has not established that the processing complies with the limits laid down in the Europol Regulation,” said EDPS’ Wojciech Wiewiórowski.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/data-pr...to-crimes/
The EDPS initiated the inquiry based on concerns that Europol’s data processing activities were going beyond its mandate and breaching its data protection rules.
These concerns were confirmed as the Supervisor concluded its investigation in September 2020, admonishing Europol to address the outstanding structural issues. For the supervisory authority, the EU agency went against the data minimisation principle by including personal data from people with no proven relation to criminal activity.
Moreover, the EDPS deemed that these data processing practices went against the principle of storage limitation, which decrees that data will only be maintained for as long as strictly necessary. The privacy watchdog considers that Europol has failed to make necessary changes to ensure compliance in both cases.
“Europol has dealt with several of the data protection risks identified in the EDPS’ initial inquiry. However, there has been no significant progress to address the core concern that Europol continually stores personal data about individuals when it has not established that the processing complies with the limits laid down in the Europol Regulation,” said EDPS’ Wojciech Wiewiórowski.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/data-pr...to-crimes/