During the discussion on the contact tracking application, the head of NSi parliamentary group, Jožef Horvat, spoke about the list of accesses to his personal data at the Police, which happened at the time of Šarec’s government. After his revelation, new information is coming to light. Namely, the State Secretary at the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Slovenia, Franc Kangler, revealed that on Sunday, May 24th of this year, just after 5 p.m., his personal data was viewed 38 times. “Abuse of the Police,” he wrote critically.
Kangler recently told our television that he is not only concerned about what he saw, but also about what is happening in the Slovenian political space. “Someone has been wanting to abuse the Police for a very long time and to use certain data for settling the political score.
What MP Horvat told us, is not the only occurrence, I know of a few more cases like this one, especially related to the right-wing politicians, and certain left-wing politicians too. Apparently, the number of insights into some records during the time when the new government was being formed was so high, that it clearly deviated from the average,” Kangler emphasized.
Kangler also under the scrutiny of the Police
Horvat revealed that they followed him using his Unique Master Citizen Number (Enotna matična številka občana – EMŠO), and the highest number of insights into his data happened at the time of the formation of the current coalition, in the second half of February, and in early March. After asking the Police to provide information on accessing his personal file, he realized that from November 2019 to May 2020, his file was accessed 22 times. “They even accessed my file 35 minutes before the midnight mass at Christmas. Yes, I was at the midnight mass, and they were looking at my file. Interesting. Very interesting.” Other deputies also asked for a record of insights to their personal data, and while some are still waiting for the information, Aleksander Reberšek (NSi) has already received it. He and Horvat found interesting correlations.
It seems that State Secretary Kangler was also one of the people who found themselves under the scrutiny of the Police, as he pointed out: “Abuse of the Police? Who and why looked at my personal file on Sunday, May 24th, 2020, at 5 in the afternoon… 38 times? Who is this interested in the State Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior? In one year, my file was accessed more than 180 times.”
Let’s recap. In February this year, then-Director General of the Police, Tatjana Bobnar, partially blocked the unannounced supervision of the members of the Commission for the Supervision of Intelligence and Security Services at the headquarters of the National Bureau of Investigation (Nacionalni preiskovalni urad – hereinafter referred to as NPU) at Litostrojska in Stegne. At the time, then-members of the Commission, Žan Mahnič, Zvone Černač, and Branko Simonovič, demanded access to the files, with which they could have confirmed or denied the suspicion that the cabinet of then-Prime Minister in resignation, Marjan Šarec, abused the NPU, the General Police Administration (GPU) and the Slovene Intelligence and Security Agency (SOVA), with the intention of influencing, threatening, and also blackmailing the deputies and party leaders of the potential future coalition.
Mainstream media swept the affair under the rug
In connection to this, the former president of the Social Democrats (SD) Dejan Židan, as a guest on the show Tarča (target), said that any possible tracking of the Police in politics would represent the biggest affair in the history of independent Slovenia. Horvat pointed out that he agreed with Židan. “This is why we will not let this die down, because we want to finally properly establish democracy in this country,” Horvat added. If one would expect the mainstream media to pay attention to the affair, which means they would problematize it, one would be wrong. It seems that their main intention is to sweep it under the rug as soon as possible.
And if one would at least expect the Information Commissioner Mojca Prelesnik to respond sharply, one would also be wrong. Despite the fact that the greatest number of insights into certain files happened during the time when the new coalition was being former, she told Siol: “The Police is also conducting an internal investigation, related to this matter, but it is difficult to predict when it will be completed, as this is a rather complex procedure. Each individual access to the personal files is not necessarily illegal, and therefore, the validity of it must be determined separately for each individual access.” However, with this, she also said that “in this case, there has been a great number of insights and other processes, as, for example, from the obtained processing logs for the period from January 1st, 2019, to the end of February 2020, it is evident that 700 employees of the Police processed the personal data of 55 politicians, and personal data of certain politicians was also processed by more than 50 different employees, which is especially true for the politicians where their personal data was being processed in connection with security.”
“The accusations we have been hearing, claiming that we are the coalition, which is trying to establish a police state, are not true. On the contrary – judging by this, Šarec and his accomplices were trying to establish a police state,” Horvat said in regards to the affair. Given that the Police have said that personal data can only be processed for the purpose of performing police duties, and that, based on the doubts that have been expressed in the media and the inspection of the Information Commissioner, they have launched an internal security investigation, the outcome will undoubtedly be interesting. In a state that is democratic, according to its constitution, any espionage is inadmissible.
Nina Žoher