A number of provisions of the draft law to amend and supplement a number of legal acts called “Big Brother” need to be reviewed and improved. If it is adopted in the variant proposed by the author – the Ministry of the Interior – this initiative will violate a series of basic human rights. The Center for the Analysis and Prevention of Corruption appraised the bill from the perspective of human rights and presented the results in a news conference at IPN.
The bill is designed to amend and supplement as number of laws so as to facilitate the fulfillment of obligations assumed with the ratification of international conventions in the field, including by excluding legislative barriers in the process of ensuring information security by the competent bodies. Expert Mariana Kalughin, who analyzed the legislative initiative, said the informative note of the bill contains insufficient argumentation. It does not include a fundamental analysis of the conditions that determined the necessity of this bill such as statistical data about specific offenses, national case law and efficiency/inefficiency of prosecution, inclining of special investigations into cases from the regulated area.
Mariana Kalughi noted also that the initiative author does not present a detailed analysis of the goals pursued by implementing new regulations, a fundamental analysis of the social, economic and other effects of the law, an assessment of the compatibility of the bill with international standards and economic-financial reasoning given that the new regulations imply additional costs. An analysis of the regulation impact is also absent, but the bill refers also to entrepreneurial activities.
The expert said a number of provisions of the draft law must be reviewed. In terms of content and quality, the norms do not meet the constitutional provisions, international standards and case law of the ECHR and pose an increased threat of impinging on the rights/freedoms. This refers to the supplements to the Penal Procedure Code, which stipulate that the computer information searches and seizure of objects containing information at institutions, enterprises, organizations and military units must be performed in the presence of the responsible representative.
According to Mariana Kalughin, the norms by which the period during which the rapid conservation of data can be ordered is extended to 180 days arouse concerns as this is not in accordance with the international standards. Furthermore, the bill allows for the appearance of Internet censorship, especially because it enables to block websites that contain information about the commission of offenses. It is not very clear what this means as details about the commission of offenses can be found in different writings and in news items.
The appraisal was carried out within the project “Harmonization of the legislation with the international human rights standards” that is financially supported by the Civil Rights Defenders of Sweden.
