The Security Service of Ukraine is monitoring between 50 – 70 % of the Internet
The level of monitoring penetration by the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) of the Internet at the present time is from 50 – 70 %. These figures were given on Thursday at a press conference by member of the Board of the Internet Association of Ukraine, Oleksandr Olshansky.
“The list of formal interceptions - those which comply with norm of Order No. 122 and have the appropriate sanction – are given on the website of the State Committee for Communications. You can get on their site and take a look at who’s listening in, and who’s not listening. Or at least, who’s openly stated that they’re doing so. Besides them, however, there are of course the ones who aren’t open about it”, Olshansky notes.
“I think if one tries to estimate the level of monitoring penetration by the SSU of the Internet, then at the moment it comes to somewhere around 50 or 60%, or even perhaps 70.
This trend is especially pronounced in the regions, where the figure can rise to 90% It’s because clearly small companies in small regions can’t provide the same resistance as big organizations”.
At the same time, according to the Chairperson of the Board of the International human rights association “International League for the Defence of the Rights of Ukrainian citizens”, Edward Bahirov, as well as the SSU, other state bodies also have the authority to check, monitor and intercept communications on the Internet, namely the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the State Border Guard, the Customs Service, the Tax Service and others.
The experts also point out that the information obtained through the course of such undertakings is not always used exclusively in the interests of the state.
«You go onto the “black market” and look at how much confidential information is being sold there, maybe commercial information about a company if this could be of interest to another company it competes with, its supplier or others”, the Chairperson of the Committee on Issues involving Telecommunications for the Ukrainian Association of Industrialists and Businesspeople, Valery Pekar commented.
The Order of the State Committee for Communications from 17 June 2002 No. 122 approved the procedure for making up and keeping a list of operators who provide access to global networks passing on information to state executive bodies and other state bodies, businesses, institutions and organizations.
In accordance with the procedure, one of the conditions for providers being included on the said list or register was the installation of monitoring equipment for the SSU to monitor all information passing through the channels of these companies.
At the present time the list of such operators contains 11 companies. Among there five companies have the right to provide Internet access services to state structures in Kyiv (the open stock company “Ukrtelekom”, the limited liability company (LLC) “Adamant”, the LLC “Lucky Net”, the LLC “Optima Special Communications” and the open stock company “Maket”) and 6 companies over the entire territory of Ukraine (the LLC “Global Ukraine”, the joint LLC “Infocom”, the open stock company “Ukrainian satellite systems”, the LLC “Information centre: “Elektronni visti”, the open stock company “City Net”, the state enterprise – scientific telecommunications centre “Ukrainian academic and research network of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukraine).
The Internet community has on many occasions called for the abolition of the above-mentioned Order due to the fact that the installation of such equipment makes it possible to carry out unsanctioned interception of personal correspondence of individuals and confidential commercial information of businesses, and is in contravention of Article 31 of the Constitution of Ukraine, Articles 27 and 30 of the Law of Ukraine “On business enterprise in Ukraine” and Article 15 of the Law of Ukraine “On business activities”, as well as other Ukrainian normative legal acts.
proUA / 30.03.2006