"The unprecedented attempt on the privacy of citizens"

The Council on Human Rights of the Russian Federation spoke against recording and storing conversations of cellular subscribers

As it was supposed, the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights under the President of the Russian Federation sharply criticized the “anti-terrorism” package of bills , which obliges telecom operators to keep records of calls and correspondence of citizens for three years. An expert opinion has been published on the official website of the HRC, which does not leave a stone unturned in the bills of Ozerov and Yarovaya.

The Council found in the draft laws under review a number of norms that unreasonably expand the scope of criminal legislation. In addition, some proposals indicate intentions to substantially weaken the guarantees of the constitutional rights of citizens.

Regarding the proposed three-year storage of call records of all cellular subscribers and Internet traffic, experts expressed the following opinion.

Part 2 of Article 2 of Bill No. 1039101-6 and Articles 7 and 10 of Bill No. 1039149-6 propose the addition of Article 186.1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, which allows the investigator to receive information from electronic communications or other telecommunications networks when investigating cases of any crimes. messages. Actually, telephone service operators keep storing information on telephone calls and electronic messages from six months to three years before the date of a court decision on their seizure. Moreover, it is prescribed to store and issue, upon legal demand, not only information about the facts of communication, but also the content of the acts of communication, including letters, messages, audio and video recordings, backdating and for up to three years.
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The proposed short story in the explanatory note is also not justified and, for the reasons stated above, cannot be motivated by referring to additional measures to counter terrorism . However, the proposed changes to Art. 186-1 of the Criminal Procedure Code concern not only countering terrorism and extremism, but also investigations of any other crimes, and constitute an unprecedented attempt on the inviolability of citizens' personal lives .

It is difficult to imagine exactly how this story can be implemented. In particular, the duty of a service provider (for example, an e-mail service) to store the contents of the communication implies that this storage should be carried out regardless of the will of the communication participant, for example, his intention to delete the contents of this communication (for example, a letter) from the server. This violates the generally accepted principles of relations of people with providers of relevant services, which will have not quite predictable consequences.

The Council has reason to believe that the final beneficiaries of the proposed rule would not be law enforcement agencies, not the state, but Internet companies that made excessive investments in data storage centers, because the practice of applying the Federal Law On Personal Data did not allow them to fill in sufficient the number of server racks [independent experts believe that "the data center industry in Russia is small and inconspicuous, it has lobbying opportunities
only Rostelecom ”, so the amendments to the server equipment manufacturers are really beneficial: the rental of a rack in a data center will cost about $ 1–1.5 thousand per month - approx. Ed.].

In addition, information security issues should be considered. The accumulation and storage of huge amounts of information about each case of communication for three years means that they can not be reliably protected from the abduction of various kinds of intruders. As we have repeatedly seen, this risk exists even in the work of the most responsible organizations. In this case, we will focus on many thousands of telecom operators. Thus, the threat of privacy breaches for all Russian citizens will increase dramatically .

Taking into account the above, the Council proposes to exclude part 6 of article 2 of draft law No. 1039101-6 and article 7 and 10 of draft law No. 1039149-6.

In general, the proposed bills “are distinguished by a pronounced attitude towards toughening the punishment as the main method of countering terrorism and extremism. Such a setting contradicts the data of criminology and the observed practice of law enforcement and does not contribute to the achievement of the goal of reducing the terrorist and extremist threat. ” Therefore, the Council considers it necessary to revise these bills in general .

The expert opinion was prepared by the standing committee on civil participation in legal reform (chaired by Tamara Morshchakova) and supported by a majority of Council members in the course of absentee voting.