The issue of proper legislative basis for law enforcement access to data held by private service providers extends beyond obvious need for having proper safeguards and guarantees in this process. It is also an issue of building trust in terms of public-private cooperation on cybercrime and electronic evidence, by contributing to clear and foreseeable legislation on the subject. However, building such trust in the long term requires more than just legal basis – it is also an issue of general trust and readiness of the government and the industry in understanding and responding to each other’s’ needs.

Following the publication and agreement of the Report on Ukraine concerning laws and regulations related to cybercrime and electronic evidence, the Council of Europe Cybercrime Programme Office now moves forward with further support to Ukraine in terms of setting the stage for the dialogue between the law enforcement and the Internet industry to reach agreement on cooperation, and with development of specific legislative options for criminal justice reform identified in the above-mentioned report.

The objective of the Seminar on communication and information sharing with local Internet service providers, organized on 8-9 February 2017 in Kyiv by Cybercrime@EAP III project of the Council of Europe (implemented with funding and support of the European Union), is to follow up on the previous efforts of the projects in Ukraine by supporting increased trust between the government and the private sector. This will be achieved by focusing on recognized principles and international best practices of public-private cooperation in cybercrime and electronic evidence, such as: Council of Europe Guidelines for the law enforcement and Internet service providers’ cooperation, ISP liabilities in the context of cybercrime and electronic evidence, cooperation in the framework of ensuring information and cyber security, personal data protection, interagency cooperation, competencies and good business options for dealing with industry (including communication skills). The Council o Europe experts from Croatia, Denmark, Estonia and United Kingdom will present on and discuss the above-noted themes with Ukrainian participants.

The seminar will be followed by a Workshop on legal amendments (9-10 February 2017) related to cybercrime and electronic evidence, where Council of Europe experts and Ukrainian counterparts will discuss the concepts of electronic evidence, definitions of categories of data, procedural powers under the Cybercrime Convention, safeguards and guarantees, data retention and other issue necessary for comprehensive regulation of law enforcement access to data held by private service providers.