Milica Tošić
Partners Serbia
At the beginning of 2019, the then Minister of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Serbia announced the coverage of Belgrade with cameras for biometric surveillance, which will have the ability to connect with facial and license plate recognition software. Serbia is this insufficiently tested surveillance system acquired from the Chinese company Huawei, without a previously established legal basis for its use, without determining the necessity and proportionality of the use of this system, but also without conducting an assessment of the impact that the use of such intrusive technologies would have on the rights of citizens . To public inquiries, their answer has been the same ever since - cameras have been installed, but facial recognition software has not been acquired, and they use the available technology as ordinary video surveillance.
At the end of August 2021, the MUP published on its website Draft Law on Internal Affairs, without prior announcement, i.e. informing the professional and general public that the drafting of this law in the plan. In the same announcement, the public was informed that the public discussion will last 20 days (the announcement has since been removed from the website of the MUP, it is not possible to find it by manual search, and the link leading to the announcement (which we saved earlier) is no longer active and cannot be opened (last attempted on 12/22/2022).
Drafting of the Draft under the veil of secrecy, as well as the shortest legal deadline for public discussion are not the only problems of this process - the adoption of this Law would represent a serious collapse of the achieved level of rights and freedoms in our country, especially the right to privacy. Professional public and civil society organizations had numerous negative comments on the provisions of this Draft, as well as proposals for their amendment and adequate formulation.
Complaints mainly related to new authorizations for the processing of personal data of citizens, strict penal provisions, new rules related to the use of the term "police", revealing the identity of authorized persons, identification of members of the police, etc. The most violent reactions were caused by provisions that provided for the use of mass and indiscriminate video surveillance of public areas, which would be connected to systems for biometric facial recognition. In this way, the controversial camera system, about which the citizens did not receive any information from the competent institutions in terms of characteristics, possibilities, or value, would receive a legal basis for use.
A few days after the end of the public hearing, the Minister of Internal Affairs announced that, after the request of the President of the Republic, withdraws the Draft from the procedure. It was stated that the reason for the withdrawal was "formal" - there are still six months left until the parliamentary and presidential elections, so it is not a good moment to pass such a law. The public hearing was not formally concluded, and the proponent of the Draft did not publish a report in which he should address all the proposals put forward by interested parties.
At the end of September, the Ministry of Internal Affairs sent an invitation to interested civil society organizations (including Partners Serbia) for informal consultations regarding further work on the Draft Law. In a little more than a year, a total of 7 meetings were held, where they discussed the comments raised during the public debate, protection of personal data, biometric surveillance, assessment of the impact on citizens' rights, powers of police officers, and the like. The representatives of the Ministry of Interior have repeatedly pointed out that the modification of the Draft is in progress, that at some point a new text will be published, but the participants of the meetings at no point had an insight into these new provisions, and the discussion and consultation on the disputed aspects was on a principled basis.
On December 8, 2022, six new draft laws were published on the MUP website, including the Draft Law on Internal Affairs.
Citizens were given twenty days of public discussion to read, interpret and highlight comments and suggestions on the 565 new articles provided for by the six new drafts. The new Draft Law on Internal Affairs did not differ to a large extent from the previous one, and the most controversial provisions are related to strong political influence in the work of the police, authorization of the police to enter citizens' apartments without a court order, massive and indiscriminate use of biometric surveillance and other solutions that can be dangerous for the human rights and privacy of citizens.
Bearing that in mind, civil society organizations this time had a ready and even better coordinated reaction, so through media appearances, participation in round tables, publication of texts and announcements, as well as communication with organizations and partners from the region and the EU, they pointed out harmful solutions proposed by the Draft.
On Monday, December 26, 2022, the Government of the Republic of Serbia announced announcement in which stated that the Prime Minister, in consultation and in agreement with the Minister of the Interior, ordered that the Draft Law on Internal Affairs be withdrawn from the adoption procedure, emphasizing that the aim of such a step "is to clarify all doubts in the public and that everyone understands the intention of the law which is of particular importance for the safety of all citizens of the Republic of Serbia". Also withdrawn from the procedure was Draft law on data processing and records in the field of internal affairs.
From January to May 2023, a series of consultative meetings of representatives of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and organizations that are part of the National Convention on the European Union were held, in order to additionally discuss the disputed provisions of the Draft Law on Internal Affairs and the Draft Law on the Draft Law on data processing and records in the field of internal affairs. At the time of updating this text, the drafts are still in the working version, their content is not publicly available, nor is it known when they will be published.
Although we agree that the adoption of a new law regulating the area of internal affairs would be useful in order to improve the operational efficiency of the police in general, and especially in the domain of ensuring public safety, order and peace, we believe that the creation of the provisions of this law should be approached with much more caution and analysis than has been done so far. Before introducing intrusive methods such as biometric surveillance, it is necessary to assess whether they are necessary and proportionate to the goal to be achieved. Bearing in mind the history of violations and misuse of personal data in Serbia, but also the fact that such measures permanently limit the rights and freedoms of citizens and change the nature of a society, the risks of introducing biometric surveillance still outweigh the possible benefits it could have.