The legal framework governing secret surveillance allows the Belarusian authorities to undertake wide-ranging surveillance with little or no justification, Amnesty International stresses in a report on the human rights situation in our country.
The document that also focuses on violations of freedoms in Belarus was submitted to the United nations. It is to be considered at the 124th session of the UN Human Rights Committee.
“The System of Operative Investigative Measures (SORM), a system of lawful interception of all electronic communications, enables the authorities direct access to telephone and internet communications and associated data. The possible surveillance restricted human rights defenders, other civil society and political activists as well as journalists in exercising their human rights. The SORM system allows the authorities direct, remote-control access to all user communications and associated data without notifying the providers. Under Belarusian law, all telecommunications providers in the country must make their hardware compatible with the SORM system. The system facilitates real-time monitoring of communications as well as access to data which telecoms operators are required by law to retain for up to five years. The SORM system provides access both to the content of communications and the associated metadata (data such as the time, manner or location of communication),” the report reads.
According to human rights defenders, the right to privacy is at risk in Belarus because the law allows broad powers of physical surveillance, including audio monitoring of people or premises, and because personal data may be compromised when computers, mobile phones, or other devices are confiscated by the authorities. The lack of transparency regarding the state’s surveillance capabilities means ultimately no one knows the full range of tools and techniques available to the authorities, they stressed:
“Secret surveillance is carried out by a wide array of state agencies and authorized on the basis of a number of broad and vague legal grounds. It can be used, as a matter of domestic law, to subject to surveillance people who are not suspected of any wrongdoing. Authorization and supervision safeguards are inadequate, and usually carried out by prosecutors, rather than an independent judicial body.”
Amnesty International urged the authorities to bring the legal framework governing secret surveillance in line with Belarus’s international obligations and in particular ensure that surveillance cannot be undertaken with little or no justification.
belsat.eu, via Amnesty International
