All visitors’ passports to be scanned from next year in Hungary

All visitors who stay in Hungarian accommodations will have to give their passport to be scanned so that their data could be stored in a central database from next year. Collecting the photographs on the documents, however, is against the law.

According to Szabad Európa, a Government Decree from August states that it would be mandatory to scan the ID documents of all guests in any Hungarian accommodation. The visitors’ data will be collected and stored in a central database.

There is a slight issue with this, however, concerning data protection. As Ádám Remport, member of the legal staff at TASZ (Hungarian Civil Liberties Union), told Szabad Európa, the authorisation to manage photographs that are on ID documents is not included in the Hungarian law on tourism.

The Hungarian National Tourism Data Supply Centre was established in 2018 to process and store the data of visitors in order to learn about their habits, which is important for the further development of tourism. The data supply centre is authorised to process data such as the name, place and time of birth, sex, nationality, mother’s name, data about the travel document, and data about entering the country (place, time), but the law does not include managing photographs.

According to the data supply centre’s website, they only manage statistical data and not personal data, but at the same time, the police can query the database, and they also forward data to the immigration police on guests from outside of the European Union.

Attila Péterfalvi, the president of the Hungarian National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, confirmed that scanning the whole document is definitely unlawful. He said the machines that would be used to read identification documents from any country will have to record only the data which is included in the law. Péterfalvi also mentioned that the Ministry of the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office did not consult with the National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information beforehand on the matter, even though they should have, due to the risk included in the considered data processing.

On the other hand, identification document photographs are also problematic because they are treated as biometric data, and the processing of such data is subject to very strict conditions within European data protection rules.

Source: Szabad Európa