How does the Ministry of Defence handle the personal data of journalists?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European regulation that contains important provisions on how to handle personal data with care. From 25 May 2018 all government organisations must comply with the GDPR.

An important point of attention in the GDPR is the active duty to inform those whose personal data are processed. This means that the 'controller' must inform journalists about the processing of their personal data. In order to prevent individual journalists from receiving several letters from various ministries, it was decided to inform the journalists as a group of professionals about the processing of their personal data. This is done in consultation with the Dutch Association of Journalists (Nederlandse Vereniging van Journalisten/NVJ) through an announcement on the Villamedia.nl website and an annex to the Villamedia magazine.

Just as all other ministries, the Ministry of Defence processes personal data of journalists. Contact details of journalists are included in various (mailing) lists and SMS alerts, and the contact details of many journalists are also included in accreditation lists. The Ministry of Defence stores journalists' details for communication purposes, for example to inform journalists about press conferences and events etc., to send digital newsletters or to send press releases via the press release service.

The processing of journalists' data is based on the public interest in informing the media and the public.

Journalists can exercise their rights as data subject. This means that journalists can submit a request to access, rectification (improvement), deletion or restriction of the processing of personal data with one of the ministries.

Journalists also have the right to transferability or data portability. On this website you can find detailed information on the use of your rights and the term within which the Ministry must have handled your request.

Your data will be stored for the period that you are working as a journalist. If you are no longer working as a journalist and/or you want to be removed from the file, please contact the Netherlands Ministry of Defence. If you no longer wish to receive certain digital newsletters, please unsubscribe from them. For paper newsletters, please contact the Netherlands Ministry of Defence to have your contact details removed from the mailing list. You can find the contact details on this website.

Just as all other ministries, the Ministry of Defence has a Data Protection Officer (DPO) who oversees data processing. Please contact the DPO of a ministry if you have any questions about the processing of your personal data.

Complaints about the processing of your personal data can be submitted to the national supervisory authority, the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Dutch DPA).

Please visit the Dutch Data Protection Authority website for more general information on the GDPR or call (+31) (0)70 888 85 00.