The French State Council has ruled that the right to access the personal data of a deceased person does not pass to his/her next of kin. In this case, the dependants of the deceased made a request to her former employers to release her telephone records in order to verify the exchanges she had with her doctors before her death. In a decision confirmed by the French State Council, both the employer and the CNIL successively refused to allow her next of kin access to the information requested. It is interesting to note that the new GDPR will not apply to the personal data of a deceased person but invites Member States to develop their own set of rules in this respect. The French legislator is currently working on this issue.
The Decision (in French)
