PUBLICITY OF THE LAND REGISTER AND DATA PROTECTION

Abstract

The paper analyses various contexts of exercising publicity and personal data protection in the land registration system. This article follows up on an earlier paper that discussed personal data protection in the context of the functions of land registers and approaches the problem in a segmented manner from four different aspects: the subject matter of publishing, access, search, and the use of personal data. The subject matter of publishing deals with the problem of which personal data should be published through the land registration system. Access to land registers deals with the problem of who should have the right to access to which published data, and how access should be exercised. Searching land registers deals with the issue of choosing criteria under which land registers should be searchable, and who should be able to use which search criteria. Finally, the use of personal data deals with the issue of how accessed data should be used. The paper is structured according to the described aspects, with a conclusion synthesizing the results, and it concludes that the fear of potential abuse of publicity of land registers is unwarranted, as the current system, which does not approach all problems in the same way, has adequately balanced the protection of legal certainty of participants in real property transactions with the protection of their personal data published in the land registration system. Consequently, it should be retained, with appropriate modifications that would regulate the remaining contested issues in a clear and more comprehensive way.