Source: "Blic"
Rodoljub Šabić, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, believes that the forthcoming law on electronic communications has to regulate the question of electronic communication privacy limitations, even though the cabinet of the Minister of Telecommunications claims that the law will not encompass such measures.
Šabić, as well as Saša Janković, the Ombudsman, expect that this law will put an end to the controversy regarding the question whether the constitutional protection encompasses only the content of the communication or so-called traffic data as well – who communicates, when, for how long, with whom, from where. He mentions the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights which state that traffic data is also contained in the constitutional protection. That is why he insists that this Ministry, when writing the new law on electronic communications, has to also include the conditions under which, in this area, anyone can deviate from the confidentiality guaranteed by the Constitution.
- If the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Society thinks it is not so, then that is for me, vaguely speaking, barely comprehensible – Šabić answers. The Commissioner mentions that it is clear that the Security-Information Agency and other security agencies have to have the possibility of utilization of certain measures in order to be able to perform duties within their scope of work. But, he says that the way those measures are utilized cannot depend on anyone’s will, but has to be defined by law.
- The only possible framework that allows the Security-Information Agency to tap telephone conversations and have access to information as to who, with whom, when, for how long, and where from communicates is the one defined in the Constitution. And the Consitution says that phone tapping can only be done upon a court’s decision. The law cannot open new possibilities for other frameworks – says Šabić.
The adoption of the new law on electronic communications is a good opportunity for him to have the posed questions addressed by the experts, and, according to democratic standards, find better solutions. The Cabinet of the Minister of Telecommunications actually denied all this for our newspapers yesterday by saying that the access to information by the Security-Information Agency or the Military Security Agency was not within their jurisdiction.
