Police to have limited access to information about citizens – human rights activist

The Ukraine’s national police employees will monitor human rights in detention facilities and accept complaints against law enforcers.

The concerns about the access of the law enforcement officers to personal data of citizens are somewhat exaggerated, director of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group Yevhen Zakharov said.

“It has been repeatedly said that the main drawback of the national police law is unlimited access of the police to the information about citizens, access to databases, which can lead to abuse. This information is not true,” Zakharov said.

The human rights activist, who participated in the elaboration of the law on the national police, said that he personally had included the following restrictions against such abuses, “First, an authorized user can have access only to the data he or she administers and cannot have access to other data. Second, this authorized database system keeps the history of all the search requests. If a problem arises, you can always see how it occurred, who applied and what the request was. The law stipulates all these points. Maybe, these guarantees are not enough, but it is another issue.”

The expert reported that the human rights department would soon be set up at the national police. The department will deal with the temporary detention facilities (TDF), which number is planned to be reduced three-fold. The mechanism of monitoring human rights in the TDFs will be changed, because the department cannot monitor itself, Zakharov said. The department will involve the public. In addition, it will consider complaints against the actions of the law enforcement officers.

Now, he said, the appropriate regulations necessary for the implementation of these changes are being elaborated.