From May 25th the new General Data Protection Regulation will come fully into force. From Panoptykon’s point of view it is a change for the better. The GDPR is the outcome of the legislative process which we were engaged in from the very beginning (already when the European Commission announced the public consultation in October 2010!). Thanks to the new regulation it will be easier for us to fight against bad practices of companies that until now exploited our personal data and calculated profit without even noticing our rights.

We have taken part in the public consultations of the draft code of conduct which is supposed to help apply the GDPR to the internet advertising sector. The code was prepared by the Polish office of the Internet Advertising Bureau.

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.

Polish Constitutional Tribunal decided yesterday that the Act of 22 December 2015 amending the Constitutional Tribunal Act was enacted in breach of the Constitution. E.g. the Sejm violated the rule that bills are considered in the course of three readings.

On 22 June, Polish president signed a new anti-terrorism law. The law contains measures that are inconsistent with the Polish Constitution and with the European Convention on Human Rights. The list of controversies is long: foreigners’ phone calls might be wire-tapped without a court order, and police might collect their fingerprints, biometric photos and DNA if their identity is “doubtful”. Online content might be blocked, citizens' freedom of assembly limited, and secret services are given free access to all public databases.