Parliament started to regulate the Internet

The Supreme Rada of Ukraine adopted in the third reading the Law “On telecommunications”. Along with the cancellation of the rule about free incoming calls, which is very important for the customers, this law stipulates the opportunity for the permanent monitoring of the Internet.

In particular, Article 39 of the Law “on telecommunications” reads: “4. Operators of telecommunications must (at their own expense) install on their telecommunication networks the equipment for realizing the ODA by competent organs, guarantee the proper work of this equipment, assist in the ODA and the measures for preventing the divulgence of the organizational and tactical methods of these activities. The operators also must guarantee the protection of the equipment from the unauthorized access”.

We believe that this provision will become a legal ground for the USS to make all providers of telecommunications to install the monitoring equipment, owing to which the security service would be able to control every user, including his electronic correspondence.

Thus, from the moment when the President will sign this law, every user should know that his every step in the Internet and all electronic messages will be permanently traced by special services.

The providers, in their turn, will suffer essential losses (tens of thousands dollars, according to the preliminary assessment), which will inevitably result in the growth of cost of their services.

So, in fact, the special services will spy on us at our own expense for, allegedly, our own safety. Well, this is a real Soviet logic!

The law was adopted almost unanimously: 296 MPs voted for this law and nobody voted against.

Some time before the MPs adopted in the first reading the draft of the law “On the activities in the sphere of informatization”, which regulates the Internet and other similar systems. 269 MPs took part in the voting, all of them supported the draft. So we see that no right for privacy exists for the MPs…

Secretariat of the Council of Ukrainian human rights protecting organizations