Photos showing him using state-funded car and chauffeur for school run: Luciano Busuttil files complaint with Information and Data Protection Commissioner

Malta Sports Council chairman (Taghna Lkoll appointment) and Labour MP Luciano Busuttil has filed a complaint with the Office of the Information and Data Protection Commissioner because of photographs published on this website, which show him using his state-funded car and chauffeur the school-run. The photographs were taken at the gate to St Dorothy’s School in Sliema. The family home is in Marsaxlokk.

The letter I received from the Information and Data Protection Office is reproduced below.

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Reference is made to a complaint lodged by Dr Luciano Busuttil who is contending that in the blog post entitled ‘ Why pay for school transport when you can use your state-funded car and chauffer?’ (read post here), photographs have been uploaded which expose the number plate of his personal car and also show images of his children, particularly that of his son who can be seen taking his head out of the vehicle’s back window.

Whereas, in terms of the provisions of the Data Protection Act, a car’s number plate constitutes personal data as it identifies or leads to the identification of a natural person, when taking into account the specificities of this case, particularly the point which you are delivering to your readership, this Office considers that no public interest arises to legally justify the publication of the registration plate of the complainant’s vehicle and therefore it should be blurred or masked. Kindly note that this shall also apply to the photographs published on a subsequent blog-post accessible here. This position is being taken regardless of the possible fact that the data subject might be using his private car for official duties.

As regards the identification of the complainant’s son in the third photograph, the publication of such information identifying a minor can solely be legitimised on the strength of the parents’ informed consent, which is certainly not the case in the complaint under the review, and consequently should also be blurred or masked.

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My response follows beneath.

Dear (name redacted),

My apologies for not replying earlier.

The chairman of the Malta Sports Council has chosen to receive a substantial annual allowance for using his own car rather than accepting a car from the government in terms of his position.

This means that his personal car is also his official car and the restrictions on data protection covering private number-plates do not apply. It is also a public-interest matter that a state-funded car is being used for household duties like collecting the children from school.

The public should not have to pay for the Sports Council chairman’s children to be collected from and dropped off at school by a state-funded car every day. So of course it is a public-interest matter.

The fact that it is also his official car is made evident by the presence of his official state-paid chauffeur in the driving seat. If the Sports Council chairman were not receiving a state allowance for the use of his own car, and yet this car was driven by his state-paid chauffeur, then this would constitute a public-interest matter too, because a state-paid chauffeur should not be at the wheel of a public official’s personal car.

The Malta Sports Council chairman’s/MP’s complaint that his son is identifiable in one of the photos is not at all convincing. He himself regularly and routinely uses his children for promotional purposes on Facebook, with absolutely no privacy settings – and their faces are far more clearly identifiable than they are in an unclear photograph of a child in a car.

Six examples of the Malta Sports Council chairman’s use of his own children for image-building purposes are attached.

Yours sincerely,

Daphne Caruana Galizia