Jan Nowak, previously a general manager at the DPA’s office and a long-term member of PiS, the ruling party, will become the new chair of the Polish Data Protection Authority. The nomination raised controversy as to whether Jan Nowak meets the legal requirements for this position.

The report looks at what happens at the interface of Internet service providers and public authorities in Poland. Who sends requests for users data, how many and for what purpose, what legal procedures are followed and what safeguards apply. During our research we analysed legal provisions and collected data from both major Internet service providers and public authorities. On that basis we were able to identify several systemic problems that should be solved in order to ensure adequate standard of protection for individuals.

Do we really need data protection in this world? Katarzyna Szymielewicz (Panoptykon Foundation) and Jérémie Zimmermann (La Quadrature du Net) talk about usage of data collected in Internet by private companies and changes that new data protection regulation could bring, including explicit consent for data processing as a rule, information about data processing presented in clear manner, regulation of profiling and privacy by default concept.