January 28 – International Data Protection Day.
Today, the message from the Commissioner for the Right to Information and Personal Data Protection has reached the phones of most Albanians, as if to remind us once again that our data is more insecure than ever.
Because they were once taken by patronageists, then hacked, and then fell into the hands of Mirlinda Karçanaj and her friends, to be used as cannon fodder in the bargains of power, pressure, and manipulation.
And yet, today Besnik Dervishi, the commissioner for personal data protection — loyal to his party — sends us a message to remind us that our data is in his and his party's hands. Not as a warning, but as a kind of political guarantee: stay calm, your privacy is under our control.
The message was distributed through One and Vodafone, which seem to be just the right channels to wish us a day as idiotic as the security systems that are supposed to protect our data.
So, the state that lost, distributed, politicized, and exposed citizens' personal data is now advising us to protect it ourselves. A moral advice from the same system that has transformed privacy into a consumable political material.
Ultimately, this is not a message about data security.
It is a cynical reminder that in Albania, privacy is no longer ours — it is the property of the government that wishes us to protect it, having already violated it.
