Data Protection Day: Three focal points for the Confederation and cantons

2019 is an election year. The renewal elections of the federal and cantonal parliaments held in the cantons are playing out in the digital reality with new data processing phenomena constantly emerging, which also affect the behavior of the voting public, according to a message from the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC). With their Guide of December 2018, the federal and cantonal data protection authorities would contribute to the free formation of will and undistorted voting guaranteed by the Federal Constitution.

Higher level of data protection in a political context

According to the FDPIC, the document encourages political parties and the service providers and social networks working for them to make the digital influence on voters' will recognizable and comprehensible. Data processing in the political context is subject to a higher level of protection than that for commercial purposes. Swiss voters should not be misled with misleading or false information about the senders and sources of political messages. According to the FDPIC, they have a right to know whether they are communicating with humans or with machines ("social bots"). Nor should they be kept in the dark about which artificial intelligences are being used and whether information from social media is being enriched and evaluated for political purposes ("social match").

Increased supervision of the police

On March 1, 2019, the new Schengen Data Protection Act will enter into force. This new federal law and the analogous adaptations of the cantonal data protection legislation implement the adaptations of the so-called acquis communautaire for Switzerland as an associated Schengen member.

With the new Schengen Data Protection Act, federal and cantonal law enforcement agencies will be required to apply new working tools such as data protection impact assessments or to report data protection breaches. The writes the media office FDPIC. Furthermore, the new legislation would provide federal and cantonal data protection authorities with additional supervisory powers: the power to issue orders is mentioned. Their supervision of federal and cantonal police forces will have a pilot effect at the federal level in the coming months: the new instruments will later be adopted from the data protection law currently being debated in parliament and extended to data processing by private individuals and for other purposes, the FDPIC writes. Due to the lack of a police law at the federal level and the resulting confusion of special decrees, the aforementioned adaptations pose particular challenges for the federal border guard and police authorities.

AHV number poses data protection risks

With an amendment to the AHV Act currently in the consultation process, the Federal Council intends to generally allow federal, cantonal and municipal administrations to use the AHV number as an identifier outside the social insurance sector as well. In the view of the federal and cantonal data protection authorities, this plan entails considerable data protection risks (cf. article). The Federal Council wanted to counter this in the bill with specific data protection requirements such as the obligation to conduct periodic risk impact assessments, which the data protection authorities welcomed, the FDPIC said. However, they would have preferred if the Federal Council had based the bill on the security concept for personal identifiers commissioned by the National Council (Postulate 17.3968), which is not yet available, the FDPIC concludes.