A recent judgement of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) placed the spotlight again on the balancing privacy rights against journalists’ freedom of expression. The judgement raises the question: How will journalistic activities be regulated by the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI) when it comes into force? In Finland, information about individuals’ taxable income and assets is publicly available. In the Satamedia case, two companies processed this information. The one company published a magazine which contained the tax information. The other company provided an SMS service which allowed a member of the public to send someone’s name to the service in order to obtain information about their taxable income and assets. These companies were taken to task by the data protection authorities in Finland.
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