Letters | Wednesday, 09 December 2009

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DPC decision sent to both PL and PN

I refer to your article in MaltaToday of 2 December under the title “Data protection decision on PBO’s ‘data-sharing’ e-mail leaked to PN”.
Please be informed that, contrary to what you state in your article, the Data Protection Commissioner does not publish the decisions on complaints received. The decision is communicated to the parties concerned and it is up to them to choose whether to publish the decision or otherwise.
You may also wish to know that, in this particular case and in conformity with standing practice, the decision on the complaint was sent by registered mail to each party on the same date and time.
From then onwards this Office had no control on the date and time of delivery to the respective party. The fact that I happened to be abroad had no bearing on the matter. Moreover, the comment from your “sources” reproduced in your article that “in this case, it is clear that the DPC has violated its own practice for the sake of political convenience” has no basis in fact and is absolutely unfounded.

J. Ebejer,
Commissioner for Data Protection

Editor’s note: At the time of publication only one of the parties concerned (the PN) had received information about the decision. Mr Ebejer is welcome to question the journalist’s sources in this instance, but that is nonetheless how the miscommunication was interpreted by these sources at the time.

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