REFORMS IN THE COMMUNICATIONS MONITORING SYSTEM AS A PRECONDITION FOR EFFECTIVE HUMAN RIGHTS PROTECTION

Abstract

The reforms in the communications monitoring system as part of the wider reform of the security services in the Republic of Macedonia, resulted with creation of a package of several laws whose adoption was supposed to provide the legislative basis for a system that would really work in accordance with the goals for which it was established. The communications monitoring system should provide a balanced protection of the right to security, on the one hand, and the right to privacy, on the other. Only on that way a priori primacy of the right to security over the right to privacy will it be disabled. Hence, the reforms in communications monitoring system are a precondition for the effective protection, primarily for the right to privacy and the secrecy of communications, but also for the right to personal data protection, the inviolability of the home as well as for the right to presumption of innocence. It is a complex and delicate matter where opening of a real debate through which the present deficiencies will be perceived in order to create an appropriate legal solutions was very important. However, the new Law on Interception of Communications as the most important in this area, retained a certain part of the provisions that were debatable in the previous legal solutions. The provisions regarding the model for interception of communications, which stipulates the establishment of a separate agency that mediates between the operators and the authorized bodies for interception of communications, were questionable as well. Also, new measures for monitoring communications in the interest of security and defense, as well as the provisions which regulate the disposition and delivery of metadata for security and defense, are also debatable. On the other side, the reform laws made an evident progress in a positive sense through the provisions for oversight and control over the interception of communications. With these changes, certain debatable elements have been overcome, especially those that have hindered it so far, and in some cases completely paralyzed the oversight and control over the monitoring of communications. In this paper we analyzed the debatable elements in the reform package of laws on interception of communications as well as some positive aspects contained in the provisions of the reform laws.