The Commissioner for Information and Personal Data Protection, Rodoljub Sabic, has estimated that the chosen method for adoption of the Law on Electronic Communications is not appropriate to the significance of the Law. This is a systemic law which asks for a serious public debate and public attention, especially of public professionals, and there are proposals for adoption of the Law via an expedited procedure. In addition, the final text of the Bill would actually be unavailable for the public, and just yesterday, it was not even available at neither the Government nor the National Assembly Website. The Commissioner estimates that certain solutions in the Law are unclear, controversial and that they could cause violation of human rights guaranteed under the Constitution.

In relation to that the Commissioner, Rodoljub Sabic, has stated the following:

''I had to read the quite extensive text of the Law quickly, but even that is enough to note some things which are questionable, to say the least, in addition to expedition and secrecy in proposing.

So, for example, in relation to the ability of the national safety authorities to access the so called retained data, court decision as a precondition for that action is not even mentioned.  And the data on communication sometimes say at least as much as the content of the telephone conversation or an e-mail. To simplify, we are talking about data which indicate who, when, how, how long and where from and the like has talked with someone, i.e. communicated over the Internet. The following question is being opened in relation to this – Are these data who are also protected under a Constitutional guarantee which states that deviation from the secrecy of letters and other means of communication is allowed only on the basis of a court decision, or the data can be accessed even without the court decision, under some institute defined by a lex specialis? I have issued numerous warnings that under the European standards, defined in the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, retained data are an integral part of communication, which are as important as the content.  Pursuant to that, I have been maintaining that the issue should be appropriately resolved and possible dilemmas removed in a well prepared, expert public discussion. Yet, the Ministry for Telecommunications has chosen to make decisions ''quick on the draw'' in this matter.  I do not believe that this can be useful, on the contrary.

In addition, I would like to remind that the Constitutional Court has estimated provisions of Article 55 of the applicable Law on Telecommunications as unconstitutional precisely because this Article envisages a possibility to allow exemptions in case of prohibited activities, which violate privacy of telecommunication messages, not only based on the court decision but even without one if this is defined under some other law.

Article 130 of the Bill, which quite inefficiently and awkwardly tries to eliminate the powers of the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection in relation to the control of ''retained data'', is also indicative. Instead of the control by an independent authority, as an alternative i.e. excluding, ''control'' by ''an authority in charge of secret data protection'' is being introduced. Since such an authority does not exist, this means that there would be no control, namely, the data processors would control themselves them self.

I believed, especially after a heated public debate in relation to similar ideas on the Law on Data Secrecy, which was finalized last summer in a right way, that we have decided to take the pathway of adoption of European standards in the field of personal data protection. It seems that the Ministry of Telecommunications begs to differ after all.“