Ever since amendments to the Law on Electronic Communication passed in Parliament and were sent off to be prepared for publication in the State Gazette, discussion in Bulgaria about privacy online has largely been reduced to the repeated mumblings of Interior Minister Mihail Mikov on how the decision was "a mistake".

Every other day or so, Mikov and his press office send media statements into the world on how Bulgaria will no longer be able to effectively fight organised crime. Anyone who has read European Commission reports on Bulgaria’s performance in recent years in this particular field might get the impression that they missed something. Does Mikov really mean to say that his department has, so far, been effective at fighting organised crime in this country?

Do the EC reports that repeatedly complain about an utter lack of progress in this field even get sent to Mikov’s office? Although denied by regional courts, Mikov and his disciples continue to claim in unison that it takes Bulgarian administration five to 10 days to file and process a request for access to private communication data.

Maybe Mikov could explain how an administration that is incapable of filing and rubber-stamping a simple standard request form in less time could have ever accomplished anything in fighting organised crime.

Mikov and his ministry have also not yet listed the successes they undoubtedly achieved during the almost full year that Ordinance 40 has been in effect, giving police unrestricted access to communication data. According to different sources, the number of printouts from mobile phone communications that various departments at the Interior Ministry have requested in recent years range from 20 to 30 a day (or about 10 000 a year) to 40 000 a year (or more than 100 a day).

Surely one of these printouts must have led to something more than closing opasnite.net for alleged distribution of state secrets in the form of gossip about the private lives of some politicians in this country, Mr Mikov? A man’s greatness is measured as much by his achievements as by his ambitions. And there’s no shortage of ambition with Mikov and his subordinates.

Mikov has already said that he wants more than unrestricted access to mobile, e-mail and web communication. Mikov wants the ability to decrypt Skype and other VoIP services.

There are several wars in this world that are not worth fighting because they cannot be won in any meaningful sense of the word. The war on drugs and the war on software piracy are two of these. An arms-race in online and electronic privacy is another one.

By definition, users are at least one step ahead of the Government. No matter what laws will be passed, what encrypted forms of communication are decrypted and tapped by the police, users will simply, seemingly overnight, migrate to newer, safer platforms, resetting the race. It would be far too easy to dismiss Mikov and his staff as unwilling and unable to comply with and implement accepted European practices in privacy protection.

There are plenty of rumours, and the occasional hint of evidence, about fees allegedly charged for back-door access to stored data. Mikov’s continued insistence on the need for unfettered access to this data without a shred of evidence as to what is achieved with it might suggest that these rumours are more than just rumours.