Concerns Raised Over the Sharing of Deceased Woman and Her Child's Photo: Statement

The Personal Data Protection Agency deeply regrets the loss of life from the explosion at the "Surmalu" shopping center and expresses condolences to the families of the victims, wishing a swift recovery to the injured and hopes that the missing will be found alive and without significant harm to their health.

A statement was published on the agency's Facebook page, focusing on the agency's authority regarding the processing of data and the concerns surrounding the publication of information (including photographs) related to the victims of the explosion, fire, and collapse that occurred at the "Surmalu" shopping center.

In particular, while the goals behind publishing information about missing persons and the proportionality of the data presented do not appear to be problematic, as it serves to garner public support in the search for those lost, the intent and proportionality regarding the publication of the deceased woman and her child's photo has raised specific concerns.

The law on Personal Data Protection in Armenia does not inherently prohibit or permit the processing of specific personal data but rather establishes the general rules and principles regarding the processing (including publication) of personal data applicable to any context, including journalistic purposes.

When publishing information about individuals, media outlets face two competing interests: the freedom of expression and the right to respect for an individual's private life. Both rights are fundamental and require special respect.

The scope of personal data processing in the exercise of journalists' freedoms, including freedom of expression, is determined by the Law on Mass Media in Armenia, and grounds for the processing of personal data by journalists are also established in other legal acts, international legal documents, as well as doctrinal interpretations, Armenian courts, and decisions from the Constitutional Court (Constitutional Court Decision SDO-997) and the European Court of Human Rights, which outline the principles of journalism (e.g., Sunday Times v. United Kingdom (1979), Janowski v. Poland (1999), Karhuvaara and Iltalehti v. Finland (2004), Hendricks v. United Kingdom (1976), Observer and Guardian v. United Kingdom (1991), Thorn v. Iceland (1992), Von Hannover v. Germany (2004, 2012, 2013)), which balance the freedom of speech and the right to receive and disseminate information on one hand, and the right to the protection of personal data when personal information is used by the journalist on the other.

This case concerns the explosion and the subsequent fire and collapse at the "Surmalu" shopping center, resulting in casualties, injuries, and missing persons.

Such incidents are inherently of public interest; however, even in the realm of providing information about such events, it is crucial not to overlook the importance of protecting people's data online and the potential risks of data processing.

Therefore, in each instance of processing personal data and disseminating information pertaining to an individual’s personal and family life, it is essential for the media (or journalist) to establish a specific purpose for processing the data and to assess whether there is a public interest that warrants sharing information about a person's private and family life.

Simultaneously, the established purpose must be specific and legitimate, meaning that the protection of public interest should be more than a pretext; it must genuinely reflect the social necessity and significance of the disseminated information (in this case, the information containing personal data).

Moreover, it is necessary for the published personal data to be proportionate to the established purpose, meaning that it must be appropriate, necessary, and moderate, processed to a degree essential for achieving the stated objective, excluding the processing of data that is unnecessary for the purpose or incompatible with it.

In this regard, it is crucial to take into account that, as a rule, this concerns the publication of data online when such published data become indefinitely available without any time or spatial limitations to an indeterminate number of other individuals, which can significantly interfere with the lives of people (the families of the victims, the injured, the families of the missing, and their well-being afterward).

In covering the unfortunate event at the "Surmalu" shopping center (as with any other incident), media outlets (journalists) and other individuals disseminating information on social networks (inasmuch as anyone can essentially act as a content creator, a “media outlet,” on social networks) must consider the specifics of the internet and the aforementioned principles of data processing.