![]() ![]() It held that the Board’s order had not been made in an attempt to hinder the religious practices of individual Jehovah’s Witnesses but rather for reasons that had to do with the processing of personal data. In the absence of any evidence and counter-arguments by the applicant community, the Supreme Administrative Court had established that individual Jehovah’s Witnesses, at least in general, did not ask data subjects to consent expressly to the processing of personal data, nor did the applicant community instruct them to do so. The consent requirement under the Act for the collection and processing of personal and sensitive data had its origin in the Data Protection Directive. The Act aimed to ensure protection of the right to respect of private life, including the right to privacy of data subjects. The interference had pursued the legitimate aim of protecting “the rights and freedoms of others”, data subjects in the present case. The manner in which it had interpreted the Act had not been arbitrary or unreasonable. The Supreme Administrative Court had followed the CJEU’s interpretative guidance on the Directive relevant for the main legal issues contested by the applicant community, providing a similar interpretation of the relevant provisions of the Act, and had applied them, taking account of the relevant established facts. The interference had been prescribed by law, namely the Personal Data Act, as in force at the material time, which had transposed the Data Protection Directive. ![]() The application of the consent requirement to the collection and processing of personal and sensitive data in the course of door-to-door preaching, a religious activity intended to manifest or spread the faith of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, had constituted an interference with the applicant community’s rights under Article 9. (i) Existence of an interference, prescribed by law and legitimate aim – The Court thus outlined the general principles deriving from its case-law on Article 9, on the one hand, and the right to privacy under Article 8 in the particular context of data protection, on the other. The core question in the present case was whether the correct balance had been struck between the right of the applicant community’s religion to manifest its faith under Article 9 and the right to privacy of data subjects as embodied in domestic data protection legislation and as protected under Article 8. Both domestic courts rejected the applicant community’s request for an oral hearing. ![]() The Supreme Administrative Court then quashed the Administrative Court’s decision in so far as it had annulled the Board’s decision, thereby bringing the latter into force. In its judgment of 10 July 2018 (Jehovan todistajat, C-25/17) the CJEU held that it should. Subsequently, on appeal by the Ombudsman, the Supreme Administrative Court sought a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) concerning the issue of whether the applicant community should be considered a “controller” of the personal data collected and processed by its members in the course of their door-to-door preaching within the meaning of Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (“the Data Protection Directive”). The Administrative Court allowed the applicant community’s appeal in part, holding that the collection and processing of data during preaching activities required the express and explicit consent of the persons concerned but that the applicant community could not be regarded as a “controller” under the Act. It held that the applicant community and its members who collected data were regarded as controllers within the meaning of the Act and ordered the applicant community to ensure, within six months, that no personal data were collected for its purposes without the prerequisites for processing such data being met. ![]() Finland – 31172/19ĭecision prohibiting Jehovah’s Witnesses religious community from collecting and processing personal data during door-to-door preaching without data subjects’ consent: no violationįacts – In 2013 the Data Protection Board, following an application by the Data Protection Ombudsman, prohibited the applicant religious community (Jehovah’s Witnesses) from collecting and processing personal data in connection with door-to-door preaching without meeting the general prerequisites for processing personal and sensitive data specified in the Personal Data Act (“the Act”), that is, without the unambiguous consent of the data subject. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |