The Israeli government has admitted that its national intelligence service, the Shin Bet, has used databases of cell phone companies to monitor the activities of journalists, as well as other professionals trained to protect privileged information, such as doctors or clergy, and in operations sometimes only tangentially related to counter-terrorism.
This was announced by the government in response to a petition filed with the Supreme Court by the NGO Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), in which it asked the court to remove a clause in the law regulating Shin Bet’s operations concerning its power to require operators to hand over information on calls or messages.
The law, passed in 2002, has been criticized for its semi-clandestine nature since it is not subject to public scrutiny, although the head of the Shin Bet is obliged to ask permission from the Prime Minister and the Attorney General every three months, and once a year before a committee of the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset).
The Supreme Court is now reviewing the regulation since, in ACRI’s view, it commits a number of unconstitutional errors by involving an invasion of privacy and taking away from journalists, for example, their right to protection of their sources.
The government now has three months to inform the Supreme Court whether or not it decides to amend the law, reports the newspaper ‘Haaretz’, although the Israeli state has already asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the petition on the grounds that «this data collection is vital to the agency’s operations» and «has already provided essential help in dismantling terrorist attacks and saving lives».
However, the Israeli state has admitted that these requests have been applied to professionals who often enjoy immunity or protection, such as lawyers, doctors or even clergymen, although it clarifies that it does not necessarily examine all the information collected.
For example, the Israeli government has admitted that it has collected information from professionals with «immunity» some five or six times a year over the past decade, which ACRI believes, particularly in the case of journalists, poses an enormous danger to the reporters’ sources.
This is why ACRI argues that the Shin Bet often acts far from the anti-terrorist sphere, as also happens when it begins to gather information in criminal investigations, which are more typical of the police sphere. In this specific case, the Israeli government guarantees that the Shin Bet dissociates itself from these investigations as soon as it perceives that they do not fall within its competence.
