Abstract

The article analyses and verifies the thesis of the existence of the duties of confidentiality of: the military (professional soldiers), Military Police, municipal guards, as well as officers of: ABW (Internal Security Agency), AW (Foreign Intelligence Agency), SKW (Military Counter-Intelligence Service), SWW (Military Intelligence Service), CBA (Central Anti-Corruption Bureau), State Fire Service, Prison Service and Police. The article presents: legal grounds for the duty of confidence and the obligated entities, the objective scope of the duty of confidentiality, protection period, criteria of access to restricted information and sanctions for unauthorized disclosure of restricted information. As a result of the analysis it has been established that the majority of the relevant legal acts do not provide a closed catalogue of “service duties of confidence”, so their identification will be based on an analysis of specific regulations. Apart from restricted information, most frequently access is granted to personal data, including so-called sensitive data, but also to information covered by banking or insurance secrecy. The specification by the legislator of the duty to keep “legally protected information” (and also similar terms) as a matter of fact reiterates the imperative to protect single secrets or secret that have been already named and protected. Therefore, if a given entity is not outside the catalogue of obligated entities specified earlier in the act introducing a given duty of confidentiality, the new regulation imposing that same duty thereon again should be considered as redundant. To the same extent it may be recognized that a “new” duty of confidentiality being a collection of “service duties of confidentiality” lacks some of the material elements needed for its establishment, that is an object of protection different from others.

The analysed statutes do not establish new named duties of confidentiality, though as a matter of fact establish the imperative to protect restricted information (including classified information of another state protected according to the principle of reciprocity under international agreements) and other – sometimes generally indicated – information or data.