"A list of people and organisations who have received public funds within a certain government program. On that list are politicians and people in government do

"A list of people and organisations who have received public funds within a certain government program. On that list are politicians and people in government doesn't want this information to get out. The data protection authority comes in handy and intervenes in the FOI request by claiming that the list has personal data since it has names of people. These are the people who are supposed to know GDPR law in and out, after all it's their job. So they should know that a name in itself is not personal data, but instead blatantly abuse their power." While I agree that this kind of interpretation of the GDPR is clear abuse and should be brought to a court, I doubt whether DPAs are involved; it is more like poorly educated civil servants are incorrectly interpreting a law on their own. "Speak out then about these abuses, why not make a sustainable contribution to this discussion?" As I said, most of the abuses related to FOI trace to incorrect and zealous interpretation of confidentiality, including commercial confidentiality and secrecy on the grounds of security. It is difficult to discuss these issues at a general level since there has not been harmonization in the EU on this area. But I can give you one example: here in Finland national security is nowadays pretty much a hush-hush topic since they convicted a couple of journalists for revealing alleged "national secrets" that were not really "secrets" for anyone following cyber security. It dropped Finland's ranking: https://yle.fi/a/74-20030007 https://yle.fi/a/74-20030007 Here various state agencies also abuse local FOI law(s) with vague confidentiality claims that have little to do with the GDPR. See for instance: https://archiverosaefp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/IVJADPO20131003PH.pdf https://archiverosaefp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/IVJADP...