DPA case 2.1-3/20/347 – Complaint Upheld (Estonia, 2020)

A journalist submitted a request to receive information from the police. The police refused the request based on national law (§ 40 (1) of the PSA) that foresees restrict access for information intended for the internal use up to five years. In the current case almost 16 years have passed since the creation of the document and the Public Information Act does not provide for the possibility of imposing restrictions for a period exceeding a maximum of 10 years. The AKI assessed, whether information needs to be protected sixteen years after the creation by restrict access, even when the national law only foresees restrictions to the access for a period of maximum ten years. The AKI states that in some cases, ten years may be too short a time and a restriction may be needed on the document established for a longer period. This is especially true of documents that have been recognized archival value, but the restrictions cannot be extended without a legal basis. Therefore, the AKI agrees with the Police and Border Guard Board that the grounds for the restriction must be reviewed before the request for information can be complied with. It remains incomprehensible to the AKI that when the Police understood that even after 10 years, the document contains information that is still needed to be protected why no steps have been taken to legitimize the protection of such information. Due to the above, the AKI argued that because the Public Information Act does not provide an opportunity to impose on information restrictions for more than 10 years and the Data Protection Inspectorate cannot change this, the Police shall remove access restrictions and provide the claimant with the information he or she wishes if it is not a state secret and there is no other reason to restrict access to information.