Maltese people's privacy adequately protected, report says

Although the number of surveillance cameras and mobile phones has increased dramatically over the past years, the Maltese still enjoy a good degree of privacy, certainly when compared to the citizens of other EU countries.

This is the conclusion of a study conducted by Privacy International, a leading British human rights group, which, following a thorough review of the current legislation and its practice in all the 25 member states of the EU, ranked Malta as being a country providing "weakened protection" to its citizens despite having "some safeguards".

The study ranks Malta 11th among the EU 25 together with Estonia, Latvia, Italy and Luxembourg.

Although the report has been published on an annual basis since 1990, this year's is the first that includes Malta. Privacy International said this year it decided to use the report as the basis for a ranking assessment of the state of privacy in all EU countries.

Member states were assessed on various categories of "privacy protection", including constitutional and legal safeguards, privacy enforcement, communications interception and communications data retention.

According to the report, Malta is strongest when it comes to the statutory protection given by law and lowest in communications interception and data retention.

The report states that the Constitution of Malta prohibits arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home and correspondence. According to Privacy International, in 2003, the government generally respected these legal requirements in practice and violations were subject to effective legal sanctions.

The report also reviews the work being done by the data protection authority and the Data Commissioner and states that until the end of 2003 the commissioner had received 77 substantive complaints, which covered issues ranging from incorrect processing of personal data, right of access to personal data, excess collection of personal data, breach of a consumer's confidentiality, collection of personal data without prior consent and abusive processing of personal data.

The report states that privacy provisions are also being taken in the public intranet system administered by the government with "the creation of secure, reserved areas that allow user groups to share restricted documents".

Commenting on its international obligations, the report states that although, in January 2002, the Maltese government signed the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime, Parliament has still to ratify the convention.

Malta's ranking is better than other established members states such as the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain.

The UK ranked at the bottom of the table and is considered by the report as being the worst offender of privacy and an "endemic surveillance society". The report estimates that there are now over four million cameras in Britain, one for every 14 residents, a 300 per cent increase in just three years.

The average Briton is captured about 300 times a day on film.

The best EU member state in protecting privacy is Germany, followed by Belgium, Austria and Greece.