Summary

Opinions have occasionally been expressed in western Europe such that too little attention is paid in Estonia to data protection. Limited awareness regarding data protection may partially be due to a living standard below that of western Europe, but also to a degree due to the euphoria accompanying the super-fast development of technology.

Data protection, however, is an issue in Estonia. Although there has been no extensive public debate, discussion has occurred on a modest scale. Occasionally, when documents with patients’ detailed medical histories are discovered at a garbage dump, or when police officers use super-databases to spy on their colleagues’ girlfriends, there have calls for certain controls. Data protection has also become a news item when there have been attempts in the implementation of laws to change practices in the processing of data for officials in various fields – statisticians, epidemiologists, civil servants. However, only a very small number of disputes have reached the desks of judges. The cases argued in court show that there are people in Estonia who consider data protection to be overly strict, and also those who believe that data should be secured more vigorously. The author analyses the Constitution in order to clarify which constitutional rights people have regarding their data, and under which conditions these rights may be restricted.