The Macedonian Ministry of Internal affairs bought almost 4.000 radio-devices from the British company "Sepura" which are compatible with the global system for communication tracking, Echelon. Photo: Aleksandar Bozhinovski.
Macedonian politicians buy equipment for eavesdropping with money from European fund
In 2007, The Ministry of Internal affairs supplied it self with a number of devices for eavesdropping purposes after having passed a higly questionnable law.
Posted on June 14, 2009
Eavesdropping usually conducted by secret services in Macedonia is an old problem dating from the communist era when it was legalized. Despite the fact that Macedonian parliament forbid eavesdropping in 1997 by any means, there was official statements that The Ministry of Interior is buying new technology for this purpose. Now with a new law for following communications, voted last year, for the first time, Macedonian police may use recordings as evidence in court, this was never the case in the past, not even during the communist era. There were loud complains by many experts in Macedonia that the articles in the new law practically include all criminal acts not just high profile like, terrorism and organized crime, and that control of secret services is very weak. E. g. there is only parliamentary commission for observation on secret services, but this commission hasn’t even had sessions the last year. Also, there is no way, technically speaking of controlling how secret services will use this legal option. Some articles even allow that prosecutors verbally order the police to eavesdrop somebody's communications when the police don't know the name of suspect.
This article was published in the online media Nacionalpress.com
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