Federation Council approved the law on the search for missing people by geolocation
The Federation Council supported a law that allows law enforcement officers to receive information about the location of mobile devices of missing citizens immediately after receiving a report of the disappearance. TASS reports.
The document establishes that within 24 hours after receiving a message about a missing person “it will be possible to receive information about incoming and outgoing calls, as well as about the location of this subscriber.” To obtain permission for this, the bodies carrying out operational-search activities must also apply to the court within 24 hours. Within 48 hours from the start of the search, law enforcement officers will have to obtain permission from the judicial authority or stop searching by geolocation.
The law separately regulates the procedure for searching for an incapacitated or partially capable person – this procedure was previously established for the search for children and adolescents. This was told by the head of the Federation Council committee on constitutional legislation and state construction Andrei Klishas.
He clarified that if such a person disappeared, then they will receive data on his whereabouts using geolocation only with the written consent of his representative.
The senator noted that in a situation where human life depends on a promptly made decision, “the availability of the proposed tool for searching for people will help avoid many tragedies.”
Recall that the bill was submitted to the lower house of parliament in the fall of 2018. The authors of the document were members of a group of State Duma deputies and senators headed by the chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko. A year later, the bill was approved in the first reading. The initiative was prepared in accordance with the instructions of the President of the Russian Federation.
In early June, it was reported that the law was supported by State Duma deputies.
Earlier, the head of the Duma Committee on Information Policy Alexander Khinshtein, commenting on the document, noted that the revised bill would remove the contradiction between its provisions and the constitutional guarantees of secrecy of communications and privacy.
