Action for Human Rights, the Center for Civic Education, Institute of Alternative and MANS filed today a petition to the Committee for Human Rights and Freedoms of the Parliament of Montenegro by which is requested an emergency session of this working body on which it would be considered the proposed amendments to the Law on ANS,having in mind that the law drastically undermines human rights of Montenegrin citizens guaranteed by the Constitution, laws, ratified international conventions, positions of the Constitutional Court of Montenegro, as well as by a number of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights.
The proposed law provides that an authorized officer of the ANS may, with the only official identification, carry out direct access to all registers and information in the possession of all legal persons, without any prior court approval and without any mechanism of appeal or judicial protection. In this way, officials of the ANS would be able to access with no control all health and banking data of Montenegrin citizens, and also to a variety of records that are in the possession of NGOs which provide services to citizens, such as the identity of persons who report corruption cases, the identity of victims of domestic violence and so on. Moreover, the proposed law stipulates that the ANS can supervise electronic communications, the access to the data on the locations of the electronic communications without a prior court decision, only on the basis of decision of the director of the ANS. In practice, this would mean that the ANS may, without limitation, to monitor the movement of all citizens of Montenegro, through their mobile phones. Moreover, and other forms of monitoring are given into the hands of the ANS by the proposed law without a court decision. Thus, if the proposed law is adopted in its current form, the ANS can perform monitoring and surveillance of all citizens of Montenegro without prior approval by the court and without any restrictions.
Putting these mechanisms in the hands of the ANS is not only absolutely contrary to the Constitution of Montenegro, all national and international regulations, but leaves a huge space for abuses by the institution on whose work failures pointed almost complete domestic and international community. Connections with the structures of organized crime, wiretapping and monitoring of foreign diplomats, and participation in a variety of electoral malpractices are just some of the reasons why the ANS in no case should receive tracking mechanisms of citizens and access to their data, especially without a court decision.
In order to prevent that the ANS came into a situation that without control can violate guaranteed human rights of Montenegrin citizens, four NGOs have invited the Committee for Human Rights to meet urgently and to consider amendments to the Law on ANS, and to act on the law with amendments in order its text to agree with the Constitution, national and international regulations and positive attitudes court.
Bearing in mind that the amendments to the ANS directly impinge in the basic human rights of all citizens of Montenegro in the extremely negative and dangerous way, we hope that the members of the Committee will understand the importance of organizing special sessions devoted to this act, and that the sessions will meet as soon in order to amend the Law of the Ans and to make it comply with the Constitution, law and international conventions that Montenegro has an obligation to respect.
Detailed information are provided in the petition that was today submitted to the Committee, find it enclosed.
MANS
