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Secret service reforms could increase surveillance of bank accounts, phone records and other personal data

By Markéta Hulpachová
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
April 23rd, 2008 issue

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Intelligence Reform Highlights



The current draft bill as prepared by the government seeks to increase the powers of the secret service by:
Reorganizing the three existing agencies into two new agencies. The new organs will be an intelligence unit (combining the civilian intelligence unit ÚZSI with the VZ military intelligence unit) and a counterintelligence unit (combining the civilian counterintelligence unit BIS and the VZ counterintelligence unit)
Lifting restrictions on private bank account access. Units will no be longer required to request information from the police
Facilitating the monitoring of phone conversations. Permission will be granted by judges for extended periods
Facilitating access to private electronic data. E-mail and any other information transmitted through the Internet will be made available
Easing access to information from phone operators. Units will be able to track time, location, and length of past phone conversations
Creating a new oversight committee. The group will be comprised of high-ranking judges and inspectors

Local intelligence agencies may soon have easier access to private data as the government prepares a bill enhancing the privileges of the secret services.
Since gaining the preliminary approval of the National Security Council last month, the draft bill — which seeks to bolster the fight against terrorism by allowing secret service officials access to sensitive information including telephone records, bank accounts and cell phone conversations — has become a volatile topic of discussion for local politicians and privacy experts.
The main proponents of the draft bill are the leaders of the governing Civic Democratic Party (ODS), whose chairman, Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek, heads the security council.
While similar attempts to increase the powers of secret services have been made in past years, the ODS had generally been dismissive of such proposals. As recently as November, Topolánek told journalists that “now was not the time” for such reforms.
Several months later, it seems the prime minister has had a change of heart. On April 14, he presented the draft bill for discussion by the Security and Defense Committee in the lower house, where it has since met with resistance from the opposition Social Democrats (ČSSD), who criticized the governing coalition for excluding them from the initial discussions.
“ČSSD is interested in a secret service reform bill that … could survive more than one electoral term,” said Jeroným Tejc, head of the ČSSD Security Committee. “The suggested reforms should include the analyses of the intelligence services, military and police as a whole.”
However, even members of the opposition agree that some reforms to the current secret service structure are necessary.
After 1989, the country felt scarred by the not-so-distant memory of the communist-era StB, a secret service notorious for its Orwellian practices. As a result, the limitations placed on modern secret services are fairly strict.
“We still don’t have a positive attitude toward intelligence services here,” said Shadow Interior Minister František Bublan. “A quiet distrust lingers on because of the past.”
Under current legislation, intelligence officials have restricted access to protected data. To monitor phone conversations, for example, they must first obtain permission from a judge, who grants them access for three-month increments.
Other sensitive information, especially financial records, is particularly difficult to access.
“Right now, we are not able to get into a bank account and break through [privacy laws], even in the serious cases that involve organized crime, large-scale money laundering or the financing of terrorism,” said Jan Šubert, spokesman for the civilian counterintelligence unit (BIS). “It’s a problem for us, because we remain blind.”
To access suspicious bank accounts, intelligence workers must request the information from the police, who are granted access to private financial records by courts during criminal investigations. The problem, Šubert said, is that “not all [financial] transactions that threaten the state’s economy or security are of a criminal nature.”
For the secret services, the draft bill, in its current form, would make information gathering considerably easier. Financial transactions and electronic data (such as e-mail) could be monitored. The right to tap phones would be extended. Telephone records showing the time, length and location of specific conversations could be tracked.
According to Bublan, these new privileges are just a small portion of the draft bill, which aims primarily to reorganize the current structure of secret services by creating an intelligence unit to gather information abroad and a counterintelligence unit specialized in domestic information gathering.
A stern warning
As Bublan pointed out, such sweeping reforms cannot be made without implementing effective mechanisms to monitor secret service activities.
Without proper safeguards, the draft bill would enable the secret services to operate as a self-contained organ, which could easily lead to a rampant misuse of information, he said.
To prevent such abuse, secret services are currently monitored by parliamentary committees that report to the prime minister, who is ultimately responsible for secret service oversight. “At first glance, it may seem positive that the secret services fall under a single constituent,” Bublan said. “In reality, the idea is absurd – the prime minister wouldn’t have time to do anything else.”
A viable solution, he added, would be to increase the competency of the parliamentary committees, whose current ability to monitor secret service activities is severely limited.
“I remember that, when the [deputies from the lower house committee] came by to conduct their regular inspection, we would secretly laugh at them,” said Vladimír Hučín, formerly a high-ranking BIS officer, of the visiting officials’ seeming irrelevance. “They have no way of knowing what the BIS is actually doing, and they don’t want to know, because the BIS has the ability to blackmail them.”
To remedy this lack of accountability, the committees should be able to find out whether or not the services were meeting their annual goals and spending money effectively, Bublan said. “A new committee, possibly made up of senators, should be created to investigate the agencies if they are accused of a severe abuse of privileges,” he added.
The draft bill leaves a majority of the old mechanisms unchanged. To compensate for the increase of privileges, the legislation grants oversight to a new independent body of high-ranking judges and inspectors.
However, privacy expert Filip Pospíšil of watchdog agency Iudicum Remedium warns that granting secret service oversight to the judiciary would upset the balance of power.
“For us, giving such control to those who hold high posts in the judiciary is controversial,” he said. “We consider the draft bill to be dangerous and unfounded.”
While he admits that the threat of terrorism warrants a more competent secret service, Hučín, himself an alleged victim of the BIS’s abuse of power, maintains that such reforms cannot be done until effective controls are established.
“I’m warning both lawmakers and the public against this bill, because I know the people in BIS leadership, and I know how they operate,” he said. “Right now, the secret service has a life of its own, and we should all be extremely wary.”

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com


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