Friday, March 20, 2009

Surveillance is still an issue (Updated)

Bogomil Shopov reports that the game about allowing MVR, the ministery of interior, to monitor to communication between citizens online.

On his blog, Bogomil writes that the minister of MVR persisted that the increased possibilities to look into digital data are necessary. In a session the comission of transport has accepted the law acccording to a wording that deviates from the one the parliament handed over the comission.

The actual wording is actually closer to the proposal originally rejected. This counter-constitutional manouvre was carried out by the delegates from the socialists, and the turkish minority party. They used their majority in the commission to defy the parliamentary decision.

The issue here is thus not only the fact that some politicians want to give MVR the right to look into citizens' elevctronical data. It is also a break of rules for the democratic work. These politicians will is carried out against the parliament's decision. The president is also on the parliament's side.

In Bulgaria the parliament and the president are directly elected by the people, not the government or the commission of transport.




Picture is taken from M, indicating that the government parties BSP and DPS can't read



Source: Bulgaria e nasha , Great thanks to M for helping me correcting and updating

4 comments:

Unknown said...

This act of BSP & DSP is just outragious. If these texts pass on to be discussed in the parliament, I'll be sure that totalitarian regime still exists (and is flourishing) in Bulgaria. I don't like speaking offensively but this time they really crossed the line.

Maladets! said...

Seriously, I don't know what is wrong with the world today. As you might know, also the Swedish government has been pushing through a number of integrity threatening laws the last year.

The situation in Sweden in Bulgaria is probably quite different, in Sweden the case is a combination of fear of terrorism and protection of intellectual property, but somehow it seems the politicians are prepared to sacrifice democratic rights for this... or rather that they don't realize what they are sacrificing.

So the same issues are now discussed in both Sweden and Bulgaria. Weird, isn't it?

I hope that it is a matter of generations, that politicians in the next generation will not feel this fear of unchecked communications.

Anonymous said...

Yes, but how long does it take to change a generation of politicians?

Maladets! said...

Good point, Jakob. One could argue that today's generation of politicians are more afraid than earlier...

Another thing is that people are young while they are young. When they grow up they sometimes become like their parents, so change doesn't come automatically.

The short answer to your question is : 25 years. When I studied history we counted four generation in a hundered years ;)

That is of course a pedagogical simplification, but it's funny to think that only eight generations back we were in the beginning of the 19th century :)


I don't know how correct it is to compare with Sweden, but as a Swede living in Bulgaria I can't avoid to compare...