The services will look at our mail and telephone? The government prepares a law, the police buys a spy program

The government wants to remodel the telecommunications law, at the same time introducing provisions that will allow the services to control, among others, citizens’ e-mail boxes. The controversial provisions were added at the last stage of work to the act, which is theoretically supposed to implement the EU guidelines.

Controversial provisions hidden in a useful act

The act is intended to meet the requirements of the Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council of 2011 on the European Electronic Communications Code and was initially supposed to be introduced in Poland in December 2020. It contains several provisions that are convenient for consumers – m.in. allows you to transfer funds remaining on your pre-paid account before your account expires.

A new provision has appeared in the act, which requires operators of services such as e-mail or instant messengers (specifically “entities providing interpersonal communication services that do not use numbers”) to store this information if necessary. Unfortunately, it has not been specified what specific data is to be collected and stored.

How controversial provisions were added to the act “practically at the last stage of government work” and without social consultations. In addition, they allow the services to access user data in a not very transparent way. The services will be able to request information without giving any reason and without judicial review, and operators will have to provide it within 24 hours of notification.

What’s more – as Rzeczpospolita writes – doubts are also raised by the surprisingly fast pace of work on the new regulations. And this, despite the fact that the act consists of 316 pages, and together with the justification, there are only 3.5 thousand pages of documents to be analyzed.

The police bought an Israeli spy program

This is not the end of the changes that will allow the services to view citizens’ data. A few days ago, the media received information that the police bought access (for 3.5 years) to the Israeli company Cellebrite for PLN 6.5 million. It is a program that allows, first of all, to view the data stored in the memory of smartphones, e.g. of detained persons.

Pegasus, however, resembles only seemingly, because it does not allow for remote surveillance of the phone in real time, and enables wired copying of data such as text messages, e-mails, photos, web browsing history, location history, etc. from the device.

Both the safety of using this type of software from an Israeli company and the reason for purchasing the tool by . In addition, the source code of some of the programs to which he is to have access