Bulgarian internet and mobile service providers would have to store electronic communication data for 12 months, while the Interior Ministry would get direct access, via a so-called interface.

Those were the main amendments to the Electronic Communications Act (ECA) accepted by the Cabinet on November 18 2009.

With the amendments, Bulgaria would implement the European Union Data Retention Directive, a Government media statement said.

Privacy advocates had heavily criticised the proposed amendments in the weeks before the Cabinet’s decision.

In accordance with the EU directive, only data concerning the identification of parties involved in the communication, as well as the method and duration of communication, would be stored. Expressly prohibited would be the storage of any other data, including the communication’s actual content.

Control over privacy protection would rest with the Commission for Protection of Personal Data, the Cabinet decided.

To access the data, a decision from the chairperson of the regional court or his replacement would be needed, for which a motivated request would have to be filed. In the case of a foreign request to access stored communication data, approval would have to be granted by the Sofia City Court. Under the amendments, the Operative-Technical Information Directorate (OTID) of the Interior Ministry would have access to stored communication data through what was referred to as an "interface".

Uncertainty remained, however, about the exact nature of this "interface" and how its access to the database would work.  If the "interface" turned out to be a computer terminal with permanent, direct access to the database, there would be "good reason to worry", Alexandar Kashumov, head of the legal team at the Access to Information Programme, told The Sofia Echo in an interview.  "If a group of state employees have unlimited access to the database, then the requirement of a court decision is simply a farce," Kashumov had warned in an opinion piece published in Bulgarian daily Dnevnik on November 17.  "Any access to this data without a court decision is unacceptable to us," Kashumov told The Sofia Echo.

Under the current law in Bulgaria, stored communication data could only be used for serious crimes, with a minimum sentence of five years. Under the proposed amendments, this would be lowered to two years.  "We would like to see the less serious crimes for which this information can be used, specified," Kashumov said. "There is possibly a conflict here with article 33 of the Bulgarian constitution, which guarantees secrecy of communication," he said.

According to the Cabinet media statement, the stored communication data would be used for both uncovering and investigating crime, something privacy organisations had warned against because it, as Kashumov said, "would seriously increase the possibility of abuse".

Under the proposed amendments, abuse of data from the communication database by government employees would be punishable with fines of between 1000 and 5000 leva. Additionally, amendments to the Penal Code envisioned one year in prison or probation, where punishment would be extended to anyone who abused the data.
This would mean the proposed changes to the ECA would not allow for the use of communication data to uncover or investigate its abuse.

As if to test the usefulness of the higher proposed fines, only a day earlier Dnevnik said an Interior Ministry employee had been arrested after 200 copies of court and investigation records had been found on her computer. The employee was said to have sold the data to parties under investigation. According to Dnevnik, she had maintained a living standard incompatible with her ministerial salary, including the ownership of two apartments, a villa and a maisonette.