The aim of the petition launched on the Rahvaalgatus.ee portal is to create a special committee on personal data protection in the Riigikogu. 

“The recent research on Estonian women led to the unlawful obtaining of personal data of thousands of people from the population register. In addition, it has been revealed that in the Population Register managed by the Ministry of the Interior, people’s data has been made available by default without the consent of the individual, i.e. default data protection is not applied, in addition to other details. The procedure and the events that took place by default for years may be in breach of the EU General Data Protection Regulation,” said Hannes Nagel, head of the NGO Crisis Research Centre.

The possibility of inappropriate handling of the data in the Estonian Population Register points to a broader security risk both in the national  and civil dence. “The allegations in the media need to be investigated separately, also retroactively, as the General Data Protection Regulation has been in force since 2018. The creation of a special committee would make it possible to clarify the legitimacy of the storage, processing and transfer of personal data to third parties in the Population Register, including in surveys, and the associated security risks,” he added.

The initiators of the petition and the signatories of the petition expect from the Special Committee, among other things, clarity on the question of on the initiative of which institution and when did the data of people in Estonia become implicitly available for surveys and advertising purposes through the e-Population Register, and also whether the aforementioned and the making of profit from the data contained in the Population Register is in compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.

The petition can be read and signed on the portal rahvaalgatus.ee, where the text of the petition is also available in Russian and Estonian. The initiative can be signed until December 15, 2023. 1000 signatures are needed to submit the initiative to the Riigikogu. The number of signatures collected can be monitored directly on the same portal, rahvaalgatus.ee. The initiator of the petition is the NGO Crisis Research Centre.

The NGO Crisis Research Centre was established in 2022 with the aim of popularising and developing the field of crisis management in a research-based manner and to initiate public debates in the field.