The Legislative Assembly (AL) yesterday passed the outline of a government-initiated bill regulating the tapping of telephones during police investigations into criminal cases.
The bill aims to allow the police to tackle ever more sophisticated crimes due to the constant development of telecommunications technology while ensuring higher protection of citizens’ privacy rights.
The telephone tapping bill is also part of the local government’s legislative work on improving its legal system on safeguarding national security and its mechanism on the respective law enforcement mechanisms.
Secretary for Security Wong Sio Chak introduced the outline of the bill during a plenary session in the legislature’s hemicycle yesterday afternoon.
Wong pointed out that telephone tapping by the police is currently regulated by Articles 172 to 175 of the Penal Procedures Code, which came into force in 1997.
Wong said that the current rules for tapping telephones listed in the Penal Procedures Code, which has been in force for over 24 years, are nowadays unable to tackle situations resulting from the constant development of telecommunications technology, because of which, he said, there is an urgent need for Macau to improve its rules on police telephone tapping.
Wong noted that the government carried out a public consultation in late 2018 on the drafting of a telephone tapping bill, during which security portfolio officials listened to opinions from ordinary residents and professionals from various segments of civil society, such as lawyers, legal scholars from local higher education institutions, those working in the telecommunications sector, judicial officials, and officials from the Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) and from the Personal Data Protection Office (GPDP). Wong said that, in general, members of the public and those from various segments of civil society agreed that there was a need to update legislation on tapping telephones.
The government has submitted a single bill regulating police telephone tapping – the outline of which was passed by lawmakers yesterday, instead of proposing a bill that would have amended the telephone tapping articles in the Penal Procedures Code. The bill, formally called Legal System on Communications Interception and its Protection, proposes to abolish Articles 172 to 175 of the Penal Procedures Code.
According to Article 172 of the Penal Procedures Code, the police are only allowed to tap telephones for certain crimes after obtaining formal approval from a judge who believes that tapping a certain telephone is very important for the police officers to be able to collect evidence and discover the truth. Wong said during yesterday’s plenary session that the new telephone tapping bill proposes that the fundamental contents of the current requirement for the police to obtain approval from a judge will remain unchanged.
In addition, the bill amends the requirement’s wording by proposing that the police will only be allowed to intercept communications for certain crimes after obtaining formal approval from a judge who believes that intercepting the communications is “necessary” for the police to be able to discover the truth, or when it is impossible or difficult for the police to collect the respective evidence any other way.
Wong also noted that the bill proposes to cover additional kinds of suspected crimes for which the police will be allowed to intercept communications.
According to Article 172 of the Penal Procedures Code, the kinds of suspected crimes that allow the police to resort to tapping telephones include those that are punishable by more than three years in prison, drug trafficking, crimes involving weapons and explosives, as well as the crimes of libel, intimidation, coercion or intrusion into other people’s private lives via telephone.
In addition to the existing ones, the new telephone tapping bill proposes that the kinds of suspected crimes for which the police will be allowed to intercept communications will also cover terrorism, money laundering, crimes endangering national security, organised crime, human trafficking, cybercrimes, crimes related to external trade activities, and bribery.
Wong said that the local government aims for the legislation of the new telephone tapping bill “to be able to improve its legal system on safeguarding national security and its enforcement mechanism, to strengthen the police’s ability to combat and prevent serious crimes and high-tech crimes, and to safeguard national and regional safety”.
The current telephone tapping rules listed in the Penal Procedures Code do not regulate the maximum length time which the police can tap telephones for a criminal case each time, in which case the maximum length is decided by the judge’s approval.
While the maximum length of communications interception will continue to be decided by a judge case-by-case, the bill proposes that police can only tap a particular telephone each time for up to three months.
According to the bill, the police can request a judge, if need be, to extend the interception period, but also only lasting up to three months each time.
The bill will now be passed to a standing committee of the legislature for article-by-article debate and review, after which it will once again be submitted to another plenary session for its final debate and vote.
In order to take legal effect, the law must be signed by the chief executive and be published in the Official Gazette (BO), which from January 1 will only be published online.
Secretary for Security Wong Sio Chak (not wearing a facemask) addresses yesterday’s plenary session in the Legislative Assembly’s (AL) hemicycle. Photo: GCS
