Polish providers fight email monitoring obligation

According to an item on Warsaw Polish Radio 1 on 19 March 2002, telecommunication providers in Poland have received an order from the Ministry of Infrastructure to install email wiretapping equipment.

In the item counsellor Daniel Wieszczycki stated the order is contrary to the Constitutional right of secrecy of correspondence. In pursuance of the order, the operators are obliged to connect their lines to authorized surveillance institutions. These are the Internal Security Agency, the Intelligence Agency, the Military Gendarmerie, the Border Guard, the police and the military intelligence.

Counsellor Wieszczycki emphasized that the Internet communities have already announced that they would take the order to the Constitutional Tribunal. He said: “we noticed some characteristics of this order, such as a lack of respect for the Constitutional right to protection of secrecy of communication. Indeed, it orders the application of technical solutions which will make impossible court supervision of the installation of such monitoring provisions or of surveillance in general…”

Translation source: Foreign Broadcast Information Service (USA government), document number FBIS-EEU-2003-0319