Dresden (dpa/sn) - In the conflict over the legal operation of one's own Facebook page, the Saxon government now wants to take the initiative. The State Chancellery announced on Monday that the issue of data protection was taken very seriously. "The State Chancellery has applied for the deactivation of the Insights function on Facebook for its Facebook page and has thus already complied with a key request from the data protection officer," said government spokesman Ralph Schreiber.
The hearing letter from the data protection officer is currently being examined and a corresponding statement is being prepared. In addition, the State Chancellery is in talks with the federal government and Facebook at various levels.
The "Sächsische Zeitung" reported on Monday that Saxony's data protection officer, Juliane Hundert, now officially wants to take action against the state government's fan page on the social network Facebook. Your authority intends to prohibit the State Chancellery from operating the Facebook fan page "Sachsen.de" until further notice if it continues to fail to comply with the valid legal situation. At the same time, the data protection officer announced that she would warn the State Chancellery, among other things, for continued negligence and violations of the Telecommunications Act. Hundreds spokesman Andreas Schneider confirmed the report.
The background to the conflict is a decision by the European Court of Justice. Accordingly, all public institutions must prevent personal user data from being stored when operating such sites. However, Facebook saves who visits which pages in order to create user profiles and thus place advertising in a targeted manner.
"It is important to get Facebook to do more data protection. However, we cannot leave the discourse to data protection officers and the courts alone. Those responsible for the state's information mandate must also play an active role in this. We see the federal government in particular as having a duty here," explained Government Spokesman Schreiber.
It is important to oblige all providers of social networks to provide more data protection and to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation. In the debate, however, it is just as important to take into account the information mandate of government agencies and the reception behavior of the people.
"More and more citizens are getting less information from classic information channels such as newspapers, radio and television. They are increasingly using online offers and social media. This means that many users can only be reached via these channels," said Schreiber. The state government's social media profiles are therefore part of the information and public relations work that it is obliged to do as a state institution according to the established case law of the Federal Constitutional Court.
