The right to secrecy of telephone conversations in the information society (private law aspects)

Abstract

The article examines the issues of civil law protection of the secrecy of telephone conversations. It was found that at the level of civil law, as well as legislation governing relations in the field of electronic communications, the right to secrecy of telephone conversations is insufficiently protected. In the provisions of the Civil Code of Ukraine, the right to secrecy of telephone conversations is erroneously considered as an integral part of the right to secrecy of correspondence and is not mentioned as an independent civil right. The norms of special legislation do not directly enshrine the right to secrecy of telephone conversations; in some cases, the protection of this right is brought to the secondary level, which reduces the level of guarantees of this right. An important deviation of the legislator from the idea of constitutional and legal protection of the right to secrecy of telephone conversations is revealed. Which is manifested in the fact that in special legislation (both at the level of laws and at the level of bylaws) this constitutional right is not related to secrecy and is protected by the protection of confidential information about the subscriber and the services he received or ordered. It is proved that the current civil legislation needs to be improved with the direct consolidation of the right to secrecy of telephone conversations as an independent civil right and appropriate means of its protection. It is proposed to define the content of a person's subjective civil right to secrecy of telephone conversations as a set of powers: the right to keep the content of telephone conversations secret: the right to maintain secrecy regarding other information about the subscriber and his telephone conversations; the right to demand that the necessary measures be taken to ensure the secrecy of telephone conversations; the right to claim the passive conduct of third parties for not violating the secrecy of telephone conversations; the right to protection of the violated secrecy of telephone conversations.