30. 08. 2010

“TAPPING” AT OPERATORS’ EXPENSE

Belgrade, August 30, 2010 (Vecernje Novosti) - While the public is awaiting the outcomes of the case of the Law on Electronic Communications, the question of constitutionality and legality, which has been processed by the Constitutional Court on the initiative of the Ombudsman Sasa Jankovic and the Commissioner for Information Rodoljub Sabic, a new question is raised: who will pay the records of the "detained communications" that the operators are obliged to keep for a year. The Ombudsman and the Commissioner claim that this Law, in combination with laws on security services, opens the door to eavesdropping without court permission. According to the Law, mobile, internet and landline operators are obliged to keep data on all calls, e-mails and messages for 12 months. However, one question is being imposed - whether and how much will the citizens allocate to the budget in order to be "wiretapped".

"The legal obligation for keeping data on communication for the purpose of investigating serious crime, preventing terrorists' attacks and similar, is not new for our operators and it has not been introduced with the new Law on Electronic Communications. The previous Law on Telecommunications also contained this obligation and is also a part of the European framework for electronic communications. Since operators keep data, they bear expenses of it - says the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Society, which was unable to provide precise information on how much this could cost and if it had already been included in the price of operators' services and whether, consequently, their services' price could rise.

The Ministry of Telecommunications, in cooperation with the security organs, the Ministry of Justice and The Commissioner, will bring the bylaws to regulate conditions the operators should comply with in order to enable authorized supervision as well as to precise data to be kept for each concrete service. The starting point for creating these documents will be documents of the Council of Europe and the EU. The public discussion on this document, in which operators and other interested parties could take part, will be held - the Ministry says.