Serbia's Republic Agency for Telecommunications (RATEL) published on 21 July 2008 a document of Instructions for Technical Requirements for Subsystems, Devices, Hardware and Installation of Internet Networks. The document explains the technical requirements for authorized monitoring of some telecom services and provides a list of obligations for the telecom operators.
According with the present text, the ISPs will have to let the police access their databases, including users' e-mail content or browsing history. This regulation seems to be the Serbian version of the data retention directive, since the scope is defined as fighting cyber crime and terrorism.
Danica Radovanovic explains on his blog at GlobalVoices what are the present requirements: "Internet Service Providers (ISP) are obligated to enable governmental bodies to access updated databases with personal data on users, contracts, maximum speed of data transfer, identification addresses as well as access to database about email users. ISPs are also obligated to provide hardware and software for passive monitoring in real time, collecting and analysing Internet activities, statistics, interception of email, attachments, web mail, IP video traffic, phone traffic, interception of IM traffic, peer-to-peer networks, service of email and forwarding the email content towards the centre of governmental bodies for supervision. Technical requirements (hardware and software) should enable reconstruction of traffic interception up to the level of application and filtering within these criteria: user name, user phone number, email address, IP address, MAC address, IM identification."
So far it is not clear what are the specific institutions that could access those data and under what circumstances, since the document made available by RATEL includes only the technical requirements. According to a declaration made for B92 by RATEL chairman Jovan Radunovic: "If they (state institutions) get a court order then they can monitor the location that one uses the internet from, and only then they can view the content. These rules are not under RATEL's jurisdiction. RATEL has, in order to provide protection from terrorism, enabled the state organs to do this. We expect they will respect all privacy rules"
Serbia: New Instructions and Law Regulations on Online Privacy (26.07.2008)
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/07/26/serbia-new-instructions-and-l...
State to have access to e-mails, browsing history (28.07.2008)
http://www.b92.net/eng/news/society-article.php?yyyy=2008&mm=07&am...
RATEL's new law and our privacy (25.07.2008)
http://www.jazzva.com/2008/07/25/ratels-new-law-and-our-privacy/
Document of Instructions for Technical Requirements for Subsystems, Devices,
Hardware and Installation of Internet Networks (only in Serbian, 21.07.2008)
http://www.ratel.org.rs/editor_files/File/dozvole/uputstva/Tehnicki_us...