Proposals made for intelligence reform
Most parties agree on need for privacy safeguards, but polarization makes consensus unlikely
The fraught process of investigating the phone tapping of a political party leader has revealed that at least the three biggest political parties agree on more transparency in intelligence collection despite the political bluster and accusations that dominated the proceedings of an investigating parliamentary committee.
The ruling conservative New Democracy, the main opposition leftist SYRIZA and the socialist PASOK – the cellphone tapping of whose leader, Nikos Androulakis, prompted the investigation – submitted proposals for a more open and accountable process of authorizing intelligence gathering in cases of threats to national security.
At first glance, the proposals do not differ so radically that a consensus appears impossible. All declare they want to take steps to protect individual rights to privacy while preserving the ability of the state and its intelligence-gathering agencies to investigate on matters affecting security.
This broad agreement is also confirmed, in a way, by the only party to openly object to it, the Communist Party. “All proposals submitted by the other parties, despite specific differences, and the proposed ‘institutional reforms’ aim at strengthening the bourgeois state,” it said in its own report.
However, the existing polarization, which is expected to intensify in the runup to the anticipated double election, most likely to be staged in late spring and early summer of 2023, makes achieving a broad consensus very difficult, if not impossible. Most likely, if a bill is submitted in the current Parliament, it will be voted on, as it can be, solely by the conservative majority.
In the same way, the Parliament is expected to approve on Thursday the majority report stating that the tapping of the phone was legal, that Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis knew nothing about it, and that no state agency has used the Predator spyware. None of the opposition parties is expected to agree on any of these points.
On the process of lifting communications secrecy, New Democracy proposes a second prosecutor and a third person, likely a government official or political appointee; SYRIZA proposes approval by a panel of senior judges instead of the current prosecutor embedded within the National Intelligence agencies; the socialists propose bringing back earlier regulations, as well as making public the names of the authority or the prosecutor/investigating magistrate regarding the lifting of the secret classification.
