According to the Decision SDO of the RA Constitutional Court analyze of Article 23 Part 5 of the RA Constitution defines three simultaneous preconditions for wiretapping the correspondence, telephone conversations, mail, telegraph and other communications,
a/ In cases prescribed by law
b/ In the order provided by law,
c/ On the Court decision:
Moreover, the Constitution does not provide for any legal possibility to deviate from the conditions.
According to the Criminal procedure Code of the RA, if there are sufficient grounds to suspect that the telephone conversations of the suspect or the accused or the conversations conducted by other means of communication can contain significant information for the case, the court makes a decision to permit the supervision and recording of these conversations.
The investigator makes a grounded decision on initiating an application to the court, which indicates the criminal case and grounds on which the appropriate investigatory actions must be taken, the surnames and names of the persons whose conversations are subject to supervision, the supervision period, institution which is instructed to conduct the technical implementation of supervision and recording. The decree is forwarded to the court.
In case of approval by the judge, the conversation supervision and recording decision is forwarded by the investigator to the appropriate institution for implementation. Conversation supervision and recording can be limited by no longer than six months. They are lifted when the necessity for them is over, but in any case, no later than the end of the preliminary investigation.
The investigator is entitled to demand the record at any time for examination and listening within the established period. The record is handed to the investigator in the sealed form with an accompanying letter which must indicate the time of beginning and end of the record of conversations, and necessary technical description of used devices.
Examination and listening of records by the investigator is done in the presence of attesting witnesses, and when necessary, experts, about which a protocol is written, which must literally reproduce the part of the conversation concerning the case. The record is attached to the protocol, and the irrelevant part of it is eliminated after the court verdict becomes res judicata or suspension of the case.
