Rodoljub Sabic, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection and Sasa Jankovic, the Ombudsman, appealed today to implement the measures proposed four month ago in the shortest time possible. These measures reduce the possibility of abuse in surveillance of electronic – telephone and internet communications.

The aim is to protect each Serbian citizen from illegal interference with communications, which is the Constitutional and statutory minimum, and highest state officials should be even more protected from abuse, but also not be abolished from investigation where there exist documented ground and judicial decision", think Jankovic and Sabic.
The Commissioner and the Ombudsman point out that there is an urgent need to amend the Electronic Communications Law, the Law on Military Security Services, the Law on Security Information Agency and the Code of Criminal Procedure, rather than to wait for the Constitutional Court to make decisions on their evident inconsistency with the Constitution.
In order to provide the efficient functioning of the relevant services, new legislation must be accompanied with adequate organizational measures such as 24-hour duty judges and IT solutions which speed up prior judge control and making decisions on requests for access to communications and communications data.
For the purpose of more effective implementation and better control of legality of surveillance measures, it is necessary, as at statutory so as at actual plan, to provide conditions for integration of existing parallel and multiplied technical capacities of various agencies and the police into one national agency which, as a provider, provides technical services necessary for interception of communications and other signals to all authorized users. This would standardize procedures regarding providers of electronic communications and their obligations, and ensure indelible audit trail of each access to telecommunications, along with all the data required to properly conduct subsequent control of legality and regularity of such access.
It is necessary to strengthen internal control mechanisms, but also oblige them to report their findings of the importance of respecting human rights to relevant parliamentary committees and the Ombudsman, especially in cases where such findings have been ignored by the body management in which they have been established and in cases of severe human rights vilations.
We also need to strengthen capacities of independent supervisory state authorities, and criminalize (to be considered a criminal offence) any obstruction of investigation or procedure they conduct.
The Commissioner and the Ombudsman alerted responsible persons and bodies and the public to the worrying situation regarding implementation of measures for surveillance of electronic communications. They warned that this situation entails risks of possible violation of rights of a large number of citizens and suggested, on the same occasion, implementation of a "set" of 14 measures to improve the situation. A few months later, they state it is indicative that relatively strong verbal encouragement of these proposed measures has not been supported at the real level. Therefore they are calling once again on authorities to regard removal of the large gap between the real situation and the constitutional guarantees of citizen's rights, in their activities, as a high-class priority.