At the proposal of the Minister of Communications and Transport of Bosnia and Herzegovina Edin Forte, the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina adopted at today’s session the Law on Amendments to the Law on Communications, which introduces the obligation to register users of mobile telecommunication services with payment in advance (prepaid users).
These changes close the legal loophole that until now allowed the use of prepaid SIM cards without user registration, which in practice made it difficult or impossible to conduct effective investigations.
Namely, security and judicial institutions face serious limitations in determining the identity of persons who use telecommunication services to commit criminal acts, since a formal subscriber relationship does not exist.
“This is a measure that strengthens the security of citizens, and does not encroach on their privacy. We are not introducing the monitoring of the content of communications, but the obligation to identify the user, as is already the case with postpaid contracts,” said Minister Forto, adding that he hopes that the Law will pass the parliamentary procedure as soon as possible.
The law provides for clear deadlines for implementation. The Regulatory Agency for Communications of BiH is obliged within six months to pass a by-law that will regulate the registration procedure in detail, while operators have a deadline of 18 months to register all existing prepaid users. Only after the expiration of that period, the operator is obliged to stop providing the service to a user who is not registered.
By adopting these amendments, Bosnia and Herzegovina is responding to specific security challenges and strengthening the institutions’ capacities for more efficient investigation, while preserving the right to privacy, writes Klix.
