The Malta Film Commission has been found guilty of disclosing personal contact details of film workers to a third company to survey working conditions in the film industry.

Information and Data Protection Commissioner Ian Deguara was asked to probe the issue by filmmaker Matthew Maggi, who filed a complaint in January after he received a call from Malta Survey to analyse the working conditions of film workers.

Maggi said it was unacceptable that the Malta Survey representative did not disclose how the company obtained his contact details and the purpose of the survey. He also asked who had access to the film workers’ responses, but his questions remained unanswered.

After calls from other Malta Survey representatives, Maggi found out the survey had been initiated by the Malta Film Commission, even though they informed him they were unaware of it.

Maggi said the only time film workers authorised their contact details to be shared was to prospective employers accessing MFC’s crew database for recruitment purposes.

The MFC denied any unauthorised disclosure of personal data and said Maggi’s claims claiming a breach of regulations were “unfounded and not true”.

On Maggi’s claim that he never authorised his contact details to be made public, the MFC said his profile on the ‘Opportunity for All Directory’ is made public and its privacy policy states such information may be disclosed to third parties.

MFC also provided a copy of the agreement it entered with Malta Survey.

Contradicting the MFC’s claims, Maggi said the ‘Opportunity for All’ website is not accessible to the public but is restricted to registered employers and individuals.

“Since, unfortunately, the industry is built on having to make an effort to keep a positive attitude, one would think twice before expressing honestly about the negative aspect of their job,” the report quotes Maggi.

“Sadly, blacklisting could badly hurt one’s reputation and income. It happens in many cases, especially in the film industry.”

The commissioner asked the MFC to clarify how Malta Survey accessed the user profiles on the ‘Opportunity for All Directory’ if they were not registered.

The MFC clarified it extracted the list from the website and transferred it to Malta Survey as an Excel sheet.

Deguara concluded MFC failed to formalise a relationship with Malta Survey by means of a contract, leading to an infringement of article 28(3) of the regulation.

The commissioner served MFC with a reprimand and warned that in the event of a similar infringement, action would be taken.

Maggi said he was disappointed by the judgement: “It takes more than a warning for the film commission to stop operating in such a sketchy way, but I think we’ve learned that by now. This is just the commissioner’s way to try to implement working conditions.

“A warning is not enough; he will not stop. They should have fined him. This is a very serious issue, these are personal details of workers.”

In 2023, producers told Times of Malta they were not consulted about a set of proposed minimum working conditions sent to film crews by the Film Commissioner Johann Grech.