The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has sent a letter to the Minister of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications to urge and plead with the Ministry to begin overseeing compliance of the Law on Electronic Communications (LEC), which is within its remit.
The letter was prompted by considerations of compliance by electronic communications operations that retain traffic data and the related duty of public authorities which access those data to keep records of requests for access to retained data and to submit to the Commissioner reports of all requests for access to retained data by the 31st January each year in respect of the preceding year. This responsibility was introduced following the most recent amendments to the LEC, with the aim of creating more sound safeguards for the constitutionally guaranteed confidentiality of communication.
The public authorities which access retained data (the Security Information Agency, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Military Security Agency) have provided those records to the Commissioner by the specified date. However, of all electronic communications operators (6-7 telephony operators, approximately 200 internet service providers) which retain traffic data, only Telenor and Telekom Srbija have provided their records within the statutory period.
As this constitutes non-compliance with clear statutory obligations and as there are indications that in some cases it was done intentionally, the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications, as the authority in charge of overseeing compliance with the LEC, needs to conduct inspections of those operators that have not complied with this obligation, verify whether they keep records of requests for access to retained data at all and, if they do, find out why they failed to submit them to the Commissioner in accordance with the law.
The Commissioner expects the Ministry to bring infringement charges against responsible operators and responsible persons after the inspection due to non-compliance with their statutory responsibilities. Under the law, non-compliance of a legal entity with the said obligations is an infringement punishable by a fined in an amount between RSD 1 million and RSD 2 million, while sole traders and responsible persons within legal entities are subject to a fine in an amount between RSD 100 thousand and RSD 150 thousand. In addition to the fine, they may be barred from pursuing their business activities.
