SHARE has brought Google to Serbia

Any requests and objections which the citizens of Serbia may have regarding their personal data processed by Google, can now be resolved through the company’s representative in Serbia. Google, as one of the first tech-giants complying with the new Serbian law, wrote a letter to the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, i.e. Serbia’s Data Protection Authority, on May 21^st, 2020, stating that their representatives would be “BDK Advokati” from Belgrade.

YouTube, Chrome, Android, Gmail, maps and many other digital products without which the internet is unimaginable, are an important segment of the industry which entirely relies on processing personal data. With a significant delay and numerous difficulties, states have begun bringing some order in this field, which directly interferes with basic human rights. The European Union has set this standard by adopting the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), while the new Law on Personal Data Protection in Serbia, in application since August 2019, followed this model too.

Although they have been operating in Serbia for a long time, global tech-corporations observe most developing countries as territories for an unregulated exploitation of citizens’ data. At the end of May 2019, three months before the application of the new Law on Personal Data Protection, SHARE Foundation informed 20 biggest tech companies from around the world about their obligations towards the citizens of Serbia whose data is being processed.

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Twitter responded to us by saying that they were working on it. A global platform for booking airline tickets, eSky, contacted us and appointed their representative in Serbia. In December 2019, we filed misdemeanor charges to the Commissioner.