Belarusian Operators Ordered To “Record Suspicious Behaviour of Subscribers”

The new order on control of Skype, Viber will not only ban calls from messengers to corded phones, but will also strengthen control over the subscribers’ behaviour.

As a follow-up to Lukashenka’s decree “On improvement of the order of transmitting messages of the electronic communication”, issued in March, the Operative-Analytical Center has published the order “On the system of counterstand against violation of traffic transmission in the telecommunications networks”. The order comes into force on September 18, 2016. According to it, the software-technical complex of counterstand against violations of the order of traffic transmission will be created at the Republican Unitary Enterprise “National Center for Traffic Exchange”.

The expert in the sphere of informational security, who wished to remain anonymous, has told charter97.org which innovations and pitfalls the new order on traffic exchange control prescribes.

- On the one hand, the regulations of the new order of the Operative-Analytical Center should not concern those who use Skype, Viber and other messengers for personal purposes – to call relatives, close people etc. I assume most limitations have been prepared for those who use IP telephony for business administration, for example, for organization of online-conferences.

On the other hand, the text of the order makes it clear that, starting since September 18 (when the legal act comes into force), Belarusians will not be allowed to call from Skype or Viber to the corded phones in Belarus. Today, such opportunity exists. For a person in Belarus, it is cheaper to call from a cell phone to a corded phone, but if a person is abroad it is cheaper to use messenger. If the owners of messengers want to provide their subscribers an opportunity to call to Belarusian phone numbers, they will have to make corresponding agreements with the Belarusian operators.

There is one more not-so-transparent moment in this order – creation of the subscribers’ numbers register. The point is, such register already exists in Belarus and it remains unclear which another register they could possibly mean. Moreover, the order contains the regulation on “recording of suspicious behaviour of subscribers” – this looks an absolute know-how, the innovation I cannot either comment or understand.

On the whole, the very intention to maintain yet another subscribers’ database alerts. On the one hand, other countries also keep various registers of numbers, and this is normal from the angle of security. However, the situation in Belarus remains quite different – our country has a very low culture of dealing with personal information. The way such information will be collected, how it will look like and how it will be used – all these issues demand public control, which Belarus, sadly, lacks.