Responding to the growing interest of the media, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has confirmed that authorized parties are surveilling the application of the Personal Data Protection Law by Serbian mobile network operators.

Stressing that such an action has never been done in Serbia, he said that the action was very big, that it started in March this year and is still ongoing, and that he will inform the public and the authorities about its results, the Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic, also added:

"The action of surveilling the application of the Personal Data Protection Law started on March 22 this year and covers all Serbian mobile network operators. Hence, it will cover Orion Telecom, Telenor, VIP Mobile and Serbian Telecom.

The subject of surveillance is not the classical interception; it is the access to the so-called communication "withheld data". It is the data – who, who with, when, how long, where from, by which means communicates.

The processing of such data, of every data individually, and especially of all the data together, in the period of previous 12 months represent a serious intrusion into privacy of the citizens. Starting from this, the Commissioner always believed that the Constitutional guarantee in Article 41, that their confidentiality is inviolable, applies to the processing of such data as well, and that the exceptions are permitted only with a court decision for the needs of criminal proceedings or homeland security. This standing was recently confirmed by the Constitutional Court decision that certain provisions of the Law on Military Security Agency and Military Intelligence Agency are not constitutional.

The surveillance is still in course, and all relevant facts will be thoroughly analyzed upon its completion. This will be extensive work, the written minutes only might be a couple of hundred of pages long.

Although the surveillance is not completed, the established facts already indicate that the number of instances of access to the so-called withheld data without a court order is very big, which definitely is a cause for concern, which is why the Commissioner and the Protector of Citizens have initiated an assessment procedure in front of the Constitutional Court, whether the provision 286, paragraph 3 of the Criminal Procedure Code is constitutional and have proposed to the Court an interim measure that would terminate the application of this provision until the completion of the constitutional assessment, because this provision is the "basis" for accessing the withheld data without a court order.

There is still a great volume of work before the completion of the surveillance action. In any case, the public and the competent state authorities will be informed about its results upon its completion."