MOSCOW, April 16 (RAPSI) — The Russian Civic Chamber has developed a list of recommendations the body believes are necessary to improve the efficiency of search for missing persons in the natural environment and to improve the accuracy of determining their location.

The Chamber informs that the document is to be sent to the federal government, the State Duma, the Federation Council, the Federal Security Service, the Prosecutor General's Office, and several relevant ministries and organizations.

Civic activists recommend to consider and approve certain legislative changes as concerns provision of by the telecom operator of information about the location of the base stations, the position of the geodata on mobile devices collected via satellite geopositioning systems, so to facilitate search and rescue operations.

Experts also propose to implement Timing Advance technology at all base stations of cellular operators, what will allow to better determine locations of missing person. In addition, Civic Chamber members noted the need to develop a procedure for interaction between rescuers and telecom operators in order to promptly obtain information about phones in a way ensuring the safety of subscribers' personal data.

Separately, the recommendations raise the issue of the development of technical requirements for equipment designed to detect signals of switched on phones, and exclude such equipment from the category of special technical means. It is also necessary to legislatively regulate the use of such equipment by rescuers during search operations. The recommendations were formulated basing on the results of the public examination of relevant federal draft legislation.

The pressing need for changing the legislation was stressed by representatives of the LisaAlert volunteer search and rescue squad, who reported that by the beginning of October 2020, the organization had received 24,000 applications to search for missing people. Most are lost in the natural environment. At the same time, about 5% of the missing persons die with the phone on. The possibility of using technologies to determine the location of mobile devices belonging to missing persons will increase the likelihood of their rescue, experts said.