The Privacy Guarantor has ordered the Municipality of Brescia to pay a fine of 10 thousand euros for having unlawfully processed the personal data reported on the burials of fetuses and on the online portal of the city’s cemetery services. In the appropriate section of a municipal cemetery, in many cases, the burials reported the same fictitious name conventionally attributed to fetuses together with the mother’s surname and the date of termination of pregnancy (reported as a coinciding date of birth/death). This also happened in cases in which the relatives had not requested, for abortive and conception products, the burial nor indicated the data to be reported on it. In defining the procedure, the Authority deemed the dissemination of such data unlawful, because it was carried out in the absence of a legal basis and in violation of the ban on disseminating health data, including information on termination of pregnancy.

The Guarantor recalled that the indication of the surname of the woman or of the husband or partner, next to the conventional name attributed to the fetus and the date of the termination of pregnancy can allow, through comparison, cross-referencing with other sources, or contextual information, the identification of the woman who performed the termination of pregnancy. Furthermore, according to the sector legislation, the indication of name, surname and date of death is necessary to identify exclusively the “deceased” and the “stillborn”.

To remedy the violations in question, the municipal administration – during the investigation – adopted several corrective measures including covering up existing plates and using a code system to identify burials, limiting the data accessible on the web portal and eliminating the wording “fetuses and stillbirths”, as well as implementing more rigorous documentation for requests for single burial of fetuses by relatives.

https://www.garanteprivacy.it/home/docweb/-/docweb-display/docweb/10106920