Deputies protect privacy in communications

On the first day of its extraordinary session, the Chamber of Deputies decided to forbid any involvement of public authorities into communication contents (communication interception or surveillance included), except for the cases when these are necessary for the national security, money interests, personal security and crime prevention.

Deputies approved the draft law regarding personal data processing and privacy protection in the telecommunications field.

The draft stipulates that telecommunications and developing telephony services will be provided only if compliant with the principle of protecting the users’ privacy, mail secret and freedom of communication. Telecommunication service providers will have to inform the subscribers on the occurrence of a special risk breaking the network security. Confidentiality of communication provided by a public telecommunications network is guaranteed.

According to the draft law that was approved, certain operations (collecting, recording, organising, storing, changing, extracting, consulting, using, revealing to a third party or deleting the data regarding the number or identification of the subscriber’s telephone set, the address or the set’s type, the total number of invoiced units, the number of the called subscriber, the type and duration of the calls, payments for the installation of a phone set) are allowed only three months after the due date when the payment for the connection services was made.

According to the draft law, any breach of these stipulations will be fined (10-250 million lei), while, in certain cases, the regulating authority will be able to withdraw the respective licence or authorisation. Mediafax