Bulgaria’s implementation in local law of the European Union Data Retention Directive has been a long and winding road, marred with attempts by the Interior Ministry to gain unsupervised, unrestricted access to stored mobile phone and internet communication data.

On February 19, Parliament accepted the final amended text, proposed by leader of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) Martin Dimitrov, which, in the words of Interior Minister Michail Mikov, "completely ties the hands of the Interior Ministry, saying that it would take days to get the necessary permission from a judge to access data.

Over the following days, Mikov and other ministry officials made public appearances to explain time and again how, if the Interior Ministry had to get permission from a judge before it could access private communication data, it would no longer be able to effectively fight organised crime.

An article that appeared in Bulgarian daily 24 Chassa on February 23 quoted an unnamed Interior Ministry senior official as saying that the ministry would be "better off buying presents for the cashier [at the desks of mobile phone operators] to give us the printouts than waiting for a judge’s decision". The daily gave as an example the story of two men "with experience and possibilities" who found out on the same day and independently from one another, that the lover they unknowingly shared was abroad with her third lover.

The two men were said to have gleaned the information from printouts of the woman’s mobile phone records they received from cashiers at the mobile operator’s office, allegedly against modest presents.

Bulgarian daily Banker quoted on February 21 Deputy Interior Minister Sonya Yankoulova as saying that the amended law would lead to a situation in which providers of electronic communication services would gain access to classified information and state secrets. According to Yankoulova, the amendments had failed to define through which ministerial body data would be accessed. As a result, court motivations for access, including access for the purposes of state secrets, would end up directly with operators, Yankoulova said.

On February 22, in a live television debate on bTV’s Seismograph, Interior Ministry chief commissioner Pavlin Dimitrov repeated the ministry party line that it would no longer be able to effectively fight serious crime. As examples of such crimes, Dimitrov listed pornography and child pornography.

In an interview with 24 Chassa daily, published on February 23, Mincho Spassov, head of the Parliamentary Committee on Internal Security, lashed back at the ministry, saying: "the Interior Ministry should read the European directive and local law on investigations".

"I have repeated a dozen times that European Directive 24 [on data retention] only places an obligation on providers of electronic communication services to retain traffic data so that these would be available in the event of pre-trial proceedings. It did not create new rights or obligations for law enforcement different from existing legislation," Spassov said.
"The nostalgia for unrestricted access is somewhat understandable as an inertia that remained from socialism, when the Interior Ministry was an almighty institution.

"Obviously that memory fades slowly after 45 years of totalitarian practice of uncontrolled access to the private lives of people when constitutional rights existed only on paper. I do not want to attack or blame anyone in the Interior Ministry; they need time."

Daily 24 Chassa quoted mobile phone operators as saying they expected a drop in requests from the Interior Ministry for printouts of calls and messages. Currently, between 20 and 30 such requests were made a day, operators said.

Filesharing
Two days before Parliament was to decide on amendments to the Law on Electronic Communication that implemented the EU Data Retention Directive, an open letter from a group of collective rights organisations demanded changes to the amendments that would broaden the rights of the Interior Ministry.

On February 17, collective rights organisations sent an open letter to Parliament and the media, arguing that copyright violations and filesharing ought to be considered as serious crimes as intended in the EU directive.

The letter was signed by the Bulgarian branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the Bulgarian representation of the Business Software Alliance (BSA), and local organisations including Muzikautor, Profon and Filmautor. The group wanted to see proposed amendments to the Law on Electronic Communications changed in a way that would allow stored data on mobile phone and internet communication to be used in the prosecution of copyright violations.

Even though the final amendments do include computer crime, they do not seem to be particularly suitable for fighting filesharing. Computer crime, as defined in a separate chapter in the Bulgarian Penal Code, pertains to unauthorised access to computer systems, unauthorised modification of computer data, the introduction of computer viruses into computer networks and unauthorised distribution of passwords.

Skype next
Only days after Bulgarian Parliament implemented the existing EU directive on data retention, Eurojust, the EU agency responsible for co-ordinating judicial co-operation, announced it would investigate how to tap Skype and other Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services.

Eurojust made its announcement after requests from the Direzione Nazionale Antimafia in Rome who said that criminals in Italy were increasingly making phone calls over the internet to avoid getting caught through mobile phone intercepts. "The purpose of Eurojust’s co-ordination role is to overcome the technical and judicial obstacles to the interception of internet telephone systems, taking into account the various data protection rules and civil rights," UK-based The Register quoted a media statement from the agency as saying.

PCWorld.com quoted Eurojust spokesperson Joannes Thuy as saying that the first meeting of the agency’s 27 national representatives was planned for the coming weeks. Precise details on time and location, however, were to remain secret.

Bringing Skype and other VoIP calls into line with landline and mobile phone calls "could be the price we have to pay for our security," PCWorld.com quoted Thuy as saying.