The reactivation of 13033 brought back a lot of questions as regards the protection of personal data of citizens. Homo Digitalis sent an open letter to the General Secretariat for Civil Protection today, 2nd December 2020.

In our open letter we highlighted many gaps that exist in their Policy on the Protection of Personal Data, which is uploaded in forma.gov.gr.

Since recent statements by government officials and publications in the media have strengthened the confusion and insecurity of citizens as regards the use of the special number 13033, we deemed necessary to receive replies as regards specific questions by the General Secretariat for Civil Protection.

More specifically, our questions were:

1. Does the service of 13033 foresee a process of denial of exit from home for citizens? If so, which are the criteria considered?
2. Does autonomous decision-making or profiling take place? If yes, which are the criteria considered?
3. Which are the criteria that lead either to the final deletion or the anonymisation for statistical purposes as described in the Policy on the Protection of Personal Data?  
4. Which process is followed for the anonymisation of personal data?
5. How long is data being stored?
6. Where is data being stored?
7. Does transfer of data to third-parties take place, and if yes, to which parties and for which purposes?
8. According to the Policy on the Protection of Personal Data, there is a process foreseen as regards the processing of requests by citizens in relation to the rectification or deletion of their personal data or the limitation of their processing or their right to object to the respective process. Is this process feasible in light of the provision which states that the personal data of the user are either deleted or anonymised the moment the user receives a reply on their phone?

The open letter was published to the Hellenic Data Protection Authority, the Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy (ADAE), the Minister of State and Digital Governance, Mr Pierrakakis and to the General Secretary for Trade and Consumer Protection, Mr Stampoulidis.

We would like to remind you that Homo Digitalis sent a relevant open letter during the first wave of the pandemic in our country, which remains unanswered. 

The open letter is available here. (in Greek)