The German university town of Tübingen in Baden-Wurttemberg is facing investigation for a potential violation of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) after it publicly congratulated a citizen for his birthday.
Mayor Boris Palmer, formerly of the Greens Party, now an independent MP, published the letter he had received from the office of the State Commissioner for Data Protection, currently led by Tobias Keber, on Instagram yesterday.
The agency wrote that it had received a complaint from a Tübingen citizen whom the city had congratulated for his 75th birthday in its official gazette. It asked for a statement from the Mayor’s office.
Palmer said he was perplexed by the letter: “You have to ask yourself if those data protection agencies still know what their actual task is … While we in the administration try daily to solve real problems we now have to deal with a bureaucratic ritual worthy of any satire.”
He added he could not understand how the citizen in question could see it as an intolerable offence to receive birthday wishes. “As if a 75th birthday was a highly confidential State secret that may only be published after multi-level security checks,” he added.
The Data Protection Agency is now urging the Tübingen city administration to obtain written consent ahead of time from all citizens it intends to congratulate for their birthdays in the gazette.
Palmer called this requirement “the peak of absurdity”.
“[All this] for three lines in the official gazette. For something that was completely normal for decades and brought joy to many. You could laugh if it did not take up so much working time,” he said.
The Mayor added that if the data protection watchdog insisted on this procedure, the city would just stop congratulating people for their birthday altogether.
“Then a few notorious complainers ensure that thousands of other people no longer receive public recognition. That is how you destroy community and then call it legal compliance,” Palmer said.
A speaker for the Data Protection office said the agency had received several complaints from people who had been mentioned without their consent in the city gazette.
He urged public administrators to treat personal data with care as criminals could use it to identify older people who might be susceptible to phone scams and such.
