In an extraordinary hearing on December 22 2009, proposed amendments to the Electronic Communications Act (ECA) will be tabled in Parliament for first reading.

Central in the debate on the ECA is that, if approved, the amendments would give the Operative-Technical Information Directorate (OTID) of the Interior Ministry permanent, direct access to the stored communication data of mobile phone and internet operators.

Database access could happen in real-time, making Judicial oversight, as well as any control by the committee for the protection of personal data, meaningless, privacy advocates and non-governmental organisations, including Access to Information Programme, the Bulgarian Electronic Frontier foundation and the Association for Electronic Communication, said.

Several political parties, including the Blue Coalition, Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and the Order, Law and Justice party, have said they shared the concerns of non-governmental organisations and were expected to vote against the proposed amendments.
In favor of the amendments were only ultra-nationalists Ataka and the ruling GERB party, Bulgarian daily Dnevnik said.

Venetta Shopova, chair of the committee for the protection of personal data, said the interface that would give OTID direct access to communication data was legally vulnerable and could possibly be challenged in Constitutional Court.

Vesselin Vouchkov, chair of the parliamentary committee on internal security and public order, said the committee would be willing to accept much of the concerns and criticism expressed by non-governmental organisations, but would only look at concrete measures after the amendments would have passed Parliament in first reading.

The Interior Ministry, however, made it very clear it was not ready to compromise on the issue of direct access to stored communication data.