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Ministry seeks approval for terror law

Public asked to weigh in on proposed plan by end of October

By Kimberly Ashton
and Hela Balínová
Staff Writers, The Prague Post
October 24th, 2007 issue

Source: Privacy International, 2006
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For yet another year, the Interior Ministry is looking to expand its access to personal data, citing protection from terrorism as the reason.
This month the ministry introduced a National Action Plan to Combat Terrorism that could be used to draft legislation that would allow police and intelligence agencies to wiretap and collect emails without going through the current court procedures.
“According to the current legal regulations, in order to perform certain actions it is necessary that security bodies meet a number of requirements and conditions, the existence of which is unquestionable,” says Vladimír Řepka, spokesman for the Interior Ministry.
“However, in real life there are cases when immediate access to specific information is needed. And gaining this information may be obstructed or frustrated due to procedural delay,” he says.
This year, as in previous years, the government cabinet may approve the plan — but that doesn’t mean that it will turn into law, according to privacy expert Filip Pospíšil. He works for the nonprofit government watchdog group Iuridicum Remedium, which gave the Interior Ministry its Big Brother Award in 2005 for its plan that year.
Every year since 2002, the first time the plan was drafted, the Interior Ministry has been rebuffed by Parliament.
The public has until the end of October to weigh in, but the Interior Ministry will not necessarily include those comments in its proposed plan, Pospíšil says.
The draft shows some significant changes from previous years, however. One of the biggest is its nebulous wording.
“It is much vaguer. The wording is so vague that it is actually very difficult to argue against it,” he says.
Patriot action
Pospíšil says that this plan, like so many passed in Europe since the 2001 attacks in the United States, was inspired by The Patriot Act, the United States’ overarching anti-terrorism law that gives police and intelligence services unprecedented access to personal data.
“Many countries have resorted to evaluation of the authority granted to security bodies and [have] adopted necessary measures … as a reaction to the terrorist attacks in the U.S. and Spain,” Řepka says.
Like the Patriot Act, the plan here seeks to bypass normal court procedures for wiretapping. “They want to have the power just to call the judge and then to get written approval later,” Pospíšil says.
Now, wiretaps and the interception of email require a court order that is good for up to six months, according to an analysis of Czech privacy laws done by Privacy International, a London-based privacy-rights group.
The Interior Ministry is also seeking the authority to force private Internet providers to pass on their information to security agencies and to abolish anonymous telephone cards.
It would also force financial institutions to hand over a client’s information. The current system of requesting information creates “a permanent threat that somebody from the bank is in touch with the suspected person and can inform him about the ongoing investigation,” Řepka says.
Testing the waters
Unlike the Patriot Act, the current plan would probably be introduced as legislation bit by bit, and not as a single act, Pospíšil says. Even if approved by the cabinet, the plan is toothless unless it is passed by Parliament.
The point of introducing the plan, Pospíšil says, is to get a feel for the mood of the public and the policymakers.
“I think it’s just a kind of test by the Interior Ministry and other intelligence services to test the willingness of the public and its representatives to exchange some privacy for promises of improved security,” he says.
Privacy International reports that the Czech Republic has routinely tried to legalize and expand their secret service’s wiretaps. The groups also voices concern about the increasing level of video surveillance in the country, which is not restricted by law, and the efforts of governmental agencies to combine separate databases into a central depository.
The Office of Personal Data Protection, which is responsible for enforcing the country’s privacy laws, is not yet commenting on the plan. Hana Štěpánková, the office’s spokeswoman, says that its lawyers are studying the proposal.
— Naďa Černá and Hela Balínová contributed to this report.

The writers can be reached at news@praguepost.com


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