Prison service found guilty and fined 500 GEL for showing Mikheil Saakashvili's footage

Published:

Personal Data Protection Service has completed the investigation on legality of publishing by the Special Penitentiary Service of the video recordings containing personal data of the third President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili on December 14, 2022 and February 15, 2023 on the official social network Facebook page.

According to the agency, it is established that the Special Penitentiary Service has made public the videos of the stay of Mikheil Saakashvili in Vivamedi clinic due to high public interest, which is the basis for data processing under subparagraph "g" of the Article 5 of the Criminal Code.

The Special Penitentiary Service has been found guilty of administrative offences under Articles 44 and 48 of the Law of Georgia on Personal Data Protection. The Special Penitentiary Service was fined 500 GEL as an administrative fine.

"The Special Penitentiary Service had the necessary legal grounds for making the video recordings public, but compliance with the principles of data processing is also a necessary prerequisite for the lawfulness of data processing. Pursuant to Section 4(c) of the Criminal Code, data may only be processed to the extent necessary to achieve the relevant legitimate purpose. The data must be adequate and proportionate to the purpose for which it is developed. Based on the totality of the evidence obtained as part of the inspection carried out by the service, from the video recordings made public by the Special Prison Service on the official Facebook page of 14 December 2022, - disclosed without a specific, clearly defined, legal purpose - on the episode depicting the eating of Mikhail Saakashvili (9 August 2022), in violation of the rules established by the legislation for video surveillance of Mikhail Saakashvili, on the facts of indefinite storage of recordings made with the installed video surveillance system in a medical institution and the display of warning signs, as well as on the facts of video surveillance without informing the medical staff in writing, the Special Penitentiary Service was recognized as a violator the law for administrative offenses provided for in Articles 44 and 48 of the Law of Georgia on Personal Data Protection, the agency's statement reads.

MORE NEWS

}