Dutch government – Court Ruling (Netherlands, 2020)

The Dutch state is legally obliged to assess whether there is a reason to fear that the firearms license applicant will misuse the weapons. The State has developed and rolled out a special digital questionnaire (e-screener) to measure each applicant up against 10 risk factors that paint a picture of the applicant’s psychological state. The Royal Dutch Hunters Society (De Koninklijke Nederlandse Jagers Vereniging) and the Royal Dutch Shooting Sports Association (Koninklijke Nederlandse Schietsport Associatie) challenged the e-screener, claiming that, among other flaws, it infringes the GDPR. The Court was asked to assess whether there was a valid legal basis for the use of the e-screener and re-affirm the plaintiffs’ rights of access, erasure and not to be subject to automated decision making. The judge found that the processing had a valid legal basis under Article 6(1)(c) GDPR (the processing is necessary for the compliance with legal obligation to which the controller is subject). The judge recalled that each data subject is entitled to receive statisfactory responses providing whether the controller is processing his/her personal data and whether they can be accessed, under Article 15 GDPR. However, in the case at hand, the judge ruled that there were no evidence that the data subjects, i.e the hunting and firearms licence applicants, did not receive satisfoactory answers. Thus, Article 15 GDPR was not violated. Furthermore, the judge ruled that the e-screener did not infringed Article 22 GDPR. Indeed, the judge clarified that the meaningful information about the recommendation algorithm behind the e-screener should not be shared with the applicants because they must remain confidential and such disclosure might render the test undermined (for example, it would be possible for the applicants to trick the algorithm into giving favorable scores). In this regard, the Dutch State provided sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the decisions were not taken sole