No abstract

New technologies have irreversibly changed the nature of the traditional way of exercising the right to free access to information. In the current information society, the information available to public authorities is not just a tool for controlling the public administration and increasing its transparency. Information has become an asset that individuals and legal entities also seek to use for business purposes. PSI particularly in form of open data create new opportunities for developing and improving the performance of public administration.In that regard, authors analyze the term open data and its legal framework from the perspective of European Union law, Slovak legal order and Czech legal order. Furthermore, authors focus is on the relation between open data regime, public sector information re-use regime and free access to information regime.New data protection regime represented by General Data Protection Regulation poses several challenges when it comes to processing of public sector information in form of open data. The article highlights the most important challenges of new regime being compliance with purpose specification, selection of legal ground and other important issues.

The article is focused on the issue of discrimination against Roma communities in the use of educational online platforms on account of failure to provide digital consent. The digital education model used during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Slovak Republic somehow forgot about Roma communities, thus preventing Roma students from accessing education through online platforms. This contribution is aimed to foster the discussion of discrimination against marginalized Roma communities in accessing education through online platforms and to point out the inadequacy of national legislation on the provision of digital consent.

This paper contributes to the discussion on effective regulation of facial recognition technologies (FRT) in public spaces. In response to the growing universalization of FRT in the United States and Europe as merely intrusive technology, we propose to distinguish scenarios in which the ethical and social risks of using FRT are unattainable from other scenarios in which FRT can be adjusted to improve our everyday lives. We suggest that the general ban of FRT technologies in public spaces is not an inevitable solution. Instead, we advocate for a risk-based approach with emphasis on different use-cases that weighs moral risks and identifies appropriate countermeasures. We introduce four use-cases that focus on presence of FRT on entrances to public spaces (1) Checking identities in airports (2) Authorisation to enter office buildings (3) Checking visitors in stadiums (4) Monitoring passers-by on open streets, to illustrate the diverse ethical and social concerns and possible responses to them. Based on the different levels of ethical and societal risks and applicability of respective countermeasures, we call for a distinction of public spaces between semi-open public spaces and open public spaces. We suggest that this distinction of public spaces could not only be helpful in more effective regulation and assessment of FRT in public spaces, but also that the knowledge of different risks and countermeasures will lead to better transparency and public awareness of FRT in diverse scenarios.

The article focuses on the intersections of the regulation of electronic identification as provided in the eIDAS Regulation and data protection rules in the European Union. The first part of the article is devoted to the explanation of the basic notions and framework related to the electronic identity in the European Union— the eIDAS Regulation. The second part of the article discusses specific intersections of the eIDAS Regulation with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), specifically scope, the general data protection clause and mainly personal data processing in the context of mutual recognition of electronic identification means. The article aims to discuss the overlapping issues of the regulation of the GDPR and the eIDAS Regulation and provides a further guide for interpretation and implementation of the outcomes in practice.