The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, Rodoljub Sabic and Ombudsman Sasa Jankovic have held today in Belgrade, in Media Center, a Press Conference on the topic „Supervising Law on Personal Data Protection's Implementation with Telephony Operators in Serbia - Constitutional Guarantees of Secrecy of Means of Communication ".
After presenting the results achieved so far in supervising the Law on Personal Data Protection in practice of telephony operators in Serbia and the measures that they have undertaken in order to protect the Constitutional guarantees of the citizens' rights, including starting adequate procedures in front of the Constitutional Court, the Commissioner and the Ombudsman evaluated that situation in practice regarding privacy protection significantly and largely deviates from the standards determined by the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia and by relevant international documents.
Starting from the quoted, the Commissioner and the Ombudsman have prepared Proposal of Recommendations for Enhancing Situation in this field, which shall be submitted to the Parliament and the Government as soon as they become constituted:
1. The Government should prepare Drafts and it should propose, and the Parliament should adopt, only such laws which observe Constitutional guarantees pertaining to privacy of communications and other human rights. State authorities' opinion, which has been established in order to protect the rights of the citizens shouldn't be ignored by the Parliament.
2. Relevant laws should be urgently changed, in order to determine which specific courts have jurisdiction to decide about police and Military Security Agency accessing data about citizens' communication (according to the existing regulations the authority of the court is known only for Security Information Agency (Bezbednosno informativna agencija - BIA).
3. Efficient organizational measures and IT solutions should be applied, accelerating previous judicial control and decision making about requests to access communication and data about communication.
4. Existing parallel technical abilities of different agencies and of Police Service should be united into one national agency, which should as a provider render technical services necessary for intercepting communication and other signals for all authorized users.
5. Procedures towards e-communications' providers and their obligations should be united.
6. Indelible recording of access to telecommunications should be secured with all the data necessary for possible consecutive control of legality and regularity of access.
7. Work of the private security sector should be legally regulated and efficient supervision of it should be secured.
8. Strong legal and actual protection of whistleblowers should be enabled (especially in the security sector, but also in general) and that protection should be entrusted to Ombudsman.
9. Interference with investigation performed by independent state control authorities should be made criminal act (Ombudsman, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, Agency for Fight against Corruption, State Auditors' Institution, and the Commissioner for Protection of Equality). Any harassment, threat or other attempt to influence the complainant or a witness cooperating with control authorities should be considered a criminal act.
10. Internal supervisory mechanisms should be obliged to inform the Ombudsman and Parliamentary Boards in charge about their findings important for respecting human rights, especially in cases when the management of the authorities in which they have been formed has disrespected them and in cases showing serious alleged or confirmed human rights' violations.
11. Results of the Data Secrecy Act implementation should be reassessed (including adoption of necessary by-laws, declassification of old documents, implementing investigations, issuing security certificates...) and serious amendments of that Act should be undertaken or passing of the new Act.
12. Capacity of the supervisory institutions should be strengthened in order to handle sensitive data and to keep them.
13. New Law on Security-Informative Agency should be adopted, in order to, besides else, secure predictability in use of special measures.
14. Police authorizations of intelligence/security services should be discussed, that is, their participation in criminal procedures.
