It's all a trick, was the general conclusion in Bulgarian media after a public hearing involving mobile phone operators, internet service providers, privacy advocates, non-governmental organisations and representatives of several political organisations with the Interior Ministry on January 12 2010.

The meeting was held to discuss proposals by the Interior Ministry to drop its demand for direct access to mobile phone and internet communication data to be included in amendments to the Electronic Communications Act.

"I would like to believe that the introduction of a two-hour deadline was not just an alibi for the re-introduction of the demand for direct access in the amendments," Alexandar Kashumov, head of the legal team at the Access to Information Programme, was quoted by Bulgarian-language daily Dnevnik as saying.

Interviewed by bTV in early January, Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said the demand for direct access to private communication data could be dropped if the law would contain guarantees that service providers would deliver requested data fast enough.

According to Tsvetanov, "fast enough" meant within two hours of a court decision to grant access. "This is how fast we can do it at the ministry," Tsvetanov said.

Failure to comply would result in heavy fines, ranging from 100 000 leva to 500 000 leva for the first and second failure respectively, with the operator losing its licence in the event of a third failure.

In the days leading up to the January 12 meeting, mobile phone operators expressed their concern, saying that it would not be possible to meet the two-hour deadline.

"It is impossible to meet the deadline, no matter what resources we throw at it," Globul spokesperson Stefan Kolev was quoted as saying by Dnevnik. The two other mobile phone operators, M-Tel and Vivatel, also categorically rejected the two-hour deadline.

According to Veni Markovski, head of the Bulgarian Internet Society, whether internet service providers would be able to comply would depend very much on the nature of the data requested. "So far the Interior Ministry has complained only about mobile operators not delivering data in a timely manner, not about ISPs," Markovski said.

According to Kolev, the ministry having direct access to communication data would be preferable to his company being guilty by default any time the deadline was not met.

Additionally the fines for failure to meet the two-hour deadlines for service providers were significantly higher than those for abuse of the database itself. "The penalties are ridiculous," Markovski told The Sofia Echo. "You cannot punish service providers 20 times what you punish your own staff for abuse."

"The Bulgarian Socialist Party proposed that the punishment for abuse should be raised to five to eight years in prison and 100 000 to 500 000 leva fines. The reasoning behind this proposal is simple; you need to use special investigative methods to catch abusers, and in order to do so, the minimum sentence has to be more than five years in prison," Markovski said.

The Interior Ministry had added a list of crimes carrying penalties of less than five years in prison, for which it wanted to be able to use private communication data. These included planning to commit murder, causing death through negligence, threatening murder, solicitation of prostitution, preaching of racial or ethnic hatred, kidnapping and so on, along with intellectual property theft or piracy.

"What does intellectual property theft have to do with planning to commit murder?" Bogomil Shopov, head of the Bulgarian Electronic Frontier, said in his blog.

"The scope of crime for which access to communication data is requested can be extended to include the uncovering of preparation of serious crimes, but not intellectual property theft," Kashumov said. "Communication traffic data is not needed for such cases," he said.

"There is no change in what the Interior Ministry wants to do. They now seem to go along, but only because the minister had said so. They don't want to go all the way," Markovski said.