Regarding news of the City of Hafnarfjörður's investigation into telephone calls

In light of reports concerning the City of Hafnarfjörður's investigation into calls made by its employees, the municipality wishes to make the following points:

It is categorically denied that this investigation involved examining with whom elected representatives or other employees of the municipality spoke on the telephone, as has been claimed in the media today. In its examination of the data, the municipality has adhered to the provisions of Article 7 of Act No. 77/2000 on personal data protection and the processing of personal data.

The City of Hafnarfjörður received a complaint containing allegations against unspecified employees of the city. It was stated that an employee of a city subsidiary had been summoned to a meeting, but that the call had been made from a telephone number registered to the City of Hafnarfjörður.

Nothing is known about this meeting with the town, or who organised it. It was necessary to establish whether anyone had phoned the employee from a telephone registered to the City of Hafnarfjörður, but he did not have the number to hand, nor did he have the names of those who attended the meeting.

It was therefore investigated whether, and if so who, had called the employee's number from the City of Hafnarfjörður's telephone system. Subsequently, a request was sent to the telecommunications company that provides services to the municipality, requesting information on whether calls had been made to this specific number during a six-hour period.  The telephone company responded to the request by providing a list of all telephone numbers that had been called.

A single council employee conducted the investigation, which was solely aimed at determining whether a call had been made to that particular telephone number. It turned out that no such call had been made, and all data received from the telephone company has been deleted.