site.btaParliament Adopts Conclusively Amendments to Electronic Communications Act

Parliament Adopts Conclusively Amendments to Electronic Communications Act

Sofia, March 26 (BTA) - Parliament Thursday adopted conclusively
amendments to the Electronic Communications Act, reducing the
period for traffic data retention from 12 to 6 months.

Also, the changes envisage preventing access to traffic data in
minor crimes and exercising judicial control over any
applications for extension of the retention period.

A report by the parliamentary committee for oversight of the
special services, SSM deployment and access to data says that
the urgent adoption of the legislative changes is necessitated
by a decision of the Constitutional Court to declare
unconstitutional provisions about the procedures for data
traffic retention in crime prevention and investigation. The
Court argued that the provisions allow access to data in minor
crime investigations and highlighted a lack of judicial
oversight over applications for extending the retention period
and a lack of control over the destruction of data records when
they are not used to launch pretrial proceedings. A provision
which allows the retention of data for 12 months also violates
the Constitution.

Sponsor MP Dimiter Lazarov of GERB said that the changes have to
be voted urgently so as not to obstruct the operations of the
special services as the ruling of the Constitutional Court will
take effect next week.

All parliamentary groups but BSP-Left Bulgaria voted the
amendments.