The interior minister decided to suspend the use of the PPA's automatic number plate recognition cameras after yesterday's joint session of the Riigikogu's Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committees. Both the Data Protection Inspectorate and the Chancellor of Justice's Office made it clear that the existing legal basis for using the cameras is not sufficient, and that the law ought to be changed. The interior ministry now intends to proceed with the required changes swiftly.

"Law enforcement agencies have to be able to do their job, they must be able to commit themselves to making Estonia safer, not to justifying the need to do their job. In order for that to happen, we took this pressure off them and so we can put all our energy into developing a solution," said Minister of the Interior Igor Taro.

Taro did not give a specific timeframe for the changes to be made, but he is not willing to argue debate the law change until the end of the year. The ministry started working on its proposals on Wednesday.

The PPA is also hoping for a solution as soon as possible, as it will have a major impact on criminal investigations.

"This morning we suspended the use of the entire number plate recognition system, which means that no new data will be collected, and in fact, from today, it will also not be possible to query the previously collected data either. This data is still there in the system and will be gradually deleted, as the rules stipulate," said Egert Belitšev, director general of the PPA.

"Last week I checked the system personally. There was no more than a month's worth of data there, because the PPA simply doesn't have the server resources to hold more data, so that data will just disappear after a while," Taro added.

The possibility that evidence gathered in connection with ongoing or previous criminal proceedings will be challenged has not been ruled out. In order to avoid that same situation occurring in the future, Taro said, the law needs to specify exactly what data is collected, for what purpose, for how long it is stored and who has access to it. The Chancellor of Justice's office added that, since such data collection is a violation of people's fundamental rights, the decision must come from the Riigikogu.

"The Riigikogu must then also consider proportionality, i.e. on the one hand, the violation of people's fundamental rights, because we all have the right to privacy, and on the other hand, the Riigikogu definitely has to take into account the state's need to protect the community, and how these needs can be reconciled so things are balanced," said Marju Agarmaa, head of the Chancellor of Justice's Office.

The much-discussed cameras are in fact only one part of a wider problem when it comes to data collection.

"Some of the databases are already very old, so some of them maybe date back 20 years. It is true that life has moved on in the meantime, and our understanding of the protection of personal data, privacy and legal clarity in general has changed over time," said Pille Lehis, head of the Data Protection Inspectorate.

According to Lehis, all ministries and major data processors ought to review the legal foundations for obtaining and storing and update the statutes of their databases accordingly.

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