Abstract

Personal data protection constitutes an inexhaustible subject for legal analysis. The personal data protection regulation is aimed at maintaining a broadly conceived respect for human dignity, which constitute a source of human rights and liberties, including the right to privacy. The provisions of the Social Welfare Act of 12 March 2004 refer to privacy, though they are not characterized by cohesion. They do not exhaustively regulate the duty of confidentiality of social workers and their application in practice is sometimes problematic. Some of the problems require legislator’s intervention. Seeking information by social workers should be aimed primarily at attaining the fundamental objective of the act, that is to make people and families overcome difficult situations in their lives by offering them assistance that is adequate to their personal, family, income and property situation. In turn, the work on the reform of the social welfare system should take into account the dangers arising for the right to privacy from the development of new data processing technologies and the fact that ever new institutions, including private entities, have access to those data.