The Law on the Establishment of the New Operational-Technical Agency (OTA) and the new Law on the Interception of Communications, which were established at a government session yesterday, are expected to enter the parliamentary procedure for their adoption by the New Year holidays, said the Ministry of Interior.
The opposition also participated in the working groups for drafting the legal solutions, said the briefings by the MOI, and the draft texts were submitted to all parliamentary groups – from the majority and the opposition in Parliament, where there were no remarks or objections on the draft laws.
OTA will be the new institution that will be a mediator between the operators and the services responsible for interception of communications (UBK, Public Security Bureau, Public Prosecutor’s Office, Customs Administration, Financial Police and the Ministry of Defense, military intelligence and other intelligence agencies). At OTA, mediation devices will be transferred to mirror the signal from the telecommunication operators who until now, were in UBK. It will activate the signal and allow the authorities responsible for the interception of communications to access the data from the operators’ communications and information systems, but they will not be able to listen to the conversation being monitored.
The solution of the mediation devices, or what are known as ‘proprietary switches’ will be in a separate agency, and not in the telecommunication operators, which was in Priebe’s proposal, as the MOI explained, was chosen because the operators in the country are with foreign capital and should avoid the danger of data flowing on the other side. This was also explained to experts from the European Union.
