The final issue we want to highlight from our Serbia Country Guide is the growing concern over privacy and the telecom sector.
Reports by our local partner the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights note that telecom operators are obligated by the The Electronic Communications Act to retain data on all electronic communications by their customers. The law states that this database can only be accessed by the government for the purposes of criminal investigations or protecting national security.
According to the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, however, of the 4,400 requests to access this data between March 2011 and March 2012, only 50 percent were accompanied by documentation specifying the legal grounds for obtaining the information. Companies reportedly provided access in 90 percent of cases.
Only one of the four major telecom operators in Serbia, Telenor, tracks whether user data has been accessed, and has reported that consumer data was accessed by government bodies 270,000 times without the company’s consent.
