Personal Data Exposure Not Needed Free For Parking

People living in the centre of Sofia have been forced to leave their personal data exposed in their windscreen if they wanted to park for free in front of their homes in blue zones, or areas where parking is paid.

According to a decision by Sofia city hall, people living where blue zones are in effect would not have to pay parking fees if they left a copy of their identity card or registration certificate behind the windscreen of their vehicle, Monitor daily reported. Bulgarian legislation reads that personal data is information on a person’s physical, psychological, mental, family, economic, cultural or social identity. Thus, the municipal companies could not require that people living in the centre leave exposed any information related to their identity, the newspaper said.

Nikolai Alexandrov, director of the municipal company Parking and Garages, told Monitor that his employees did not need most of the data included in the required papers to verify that the vehicle parked belonged to a resident of the area in question. The residents themselves were to blame for the mass-scale exposure of personal data. They should cover their personal identity numbers on the copies of the papers exposed, he said.

“The municipality has no regulation for parking preferences for the residents of blue zones. I came up with that informally, so that people would not get irritated. No one requires their EGNs (personal identity numbers) and they can easily cover them. (…) We only want the data of the vehicle and a copy of an identity card that verifies that the owner lives on the same street; we don’t even need the exact address,” Alexandrov said.propertywisebulgaria.com