New draft of the law on monitoring was presented to mass media
In the opinion of the authors of the draft (the Internet Association of Ukraine, Ukrainian Internet-community, Kharkov group for human rights protection and the Ukrainian Union of entrepreneurs and businessmen) the draft is an alternative to the version created by the USS.
On 26 March MP Valeriy Lebedivskiy, a member of the Supreme Rada Committee in charge of questions of the European integration, presented to the Parliament the law draft «On interception and monitoring of telecommunications», which stipulated the legal basis of the interception and monitoring in the course of the detective, intelligence and counterespionage activities, and the pre-trial investigation.
This question was discussed on the press-conference of the international public organization «International League of the protection of rights of the Ukrainian citizens» and all-Ukrainian public organization «Ukrainian Internet-community».
The law draft envisages the creation of the system of automatized remote interception of telecommunications – a special protected telecommunication network supplemented with technical means for interception, mounted directly in the networks of communication operators, absolving terminals, installed in court organs, which would issue the permissions for interception, operative terminals, installed in the detective departments of law-enforcing organs, and protocol terminals, installed in the ombudsperson’s office.
At that the USS gets the authorities of the special organ in charge of interception and must organize the creation of the mentioned system of automatized interception, has the right to obtain technical information from the communication operators, to realize the control over the works connected with the development and introduction of the system of remote interception, to determine the order of the development, application and modernization of such systems.
The term of interception may not be more than 6 months (for reference: in France the maximal term is 4 months, in Germany – 3 months, in Finland and Sweden – 1 month). The interception is applied only to the physical persons, who are suspected of the commitment or organization of grave and especially grave crimes. According to the draft, the person, to whom the interception was applied, must be informed about the terms of this action and the contents of the collected information.
Besides, the ombudsperson must publish the annual statistics about the interception of telecommunications in the newspaper «Golos Ukrainy» and other mass media.
This law draft was submitted as an alternative to the law draft «On monitoring of telecommunications» (presented by the Cabinet of Ministers), which is now considered by the Parliament and was assessed negatively by the Committee in charge of questions of the European integration.
Unfortunately, the law draft created by the Cabinet of Ministers does not agree with the normative acts of the European Union and the Council of Europe in the sphere of human rights protection.
«The approval of this draft will result in impossibility of further integration of Ukraine into the European processes. That is why we propose to replace it by the draft created with the participation of public. Our draft, for its turn, guarantees the opportunity to the special services to fulfill their functions efficiently», reckons V. Lebedivskiy. «Our draft takes into account the experience of the European countries and promotes the European integration».
According to the conclusions of the Parliamentary Committee of European integration, the draft developed by the USS does not contain the limitations of the term of monitoring and does not stipulate the guarantees against the arbitrary actions of law-enforcers, since the activities of the corresponding department of the USS are controlled by another department of the same agency. The control and public reporting of law-enforcing organs about the quantity of interceptions and their effectiveness are also not envisaged.
Igor Diadiura, the head of the UIC, stated that «the functions are distributed in the draft «On interception and monitoring of telecommunications» in order to prevent the concentration of these functions in one hands». The inadmissible situation is also liquidated, when an organ, which has the competence to realize the interception, controls itself, as it is stated in the governmental law draft «On monitoring of telecommunications».
The law draft «On interception and monitoring of telecommunications» of the UIC suggests another state organ for the coordination of technical side of interception (cooperation with operators, licensing, etc.). The authors of the draft believe that these authorities must be rendered to the State Committee of communications and informatization, but not to the USS.
UNIAN