Knesset keeps Shin Bet’s coronavirus surveillance on short leash

The Knesset Intelligence Subcommittee on Thursday extended surveillance of coronavirus-infected citizens by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Service) for only five days, keeping the program on a short leash.

Committee chairman Gabi Ashkenazi (Blue and White) said that the five days were designed to give the government time to decide whether it would try to pass new legislation to comply with a High Court of Justice order and continue running, while still ensuring a quick decision.

Deputy Attorney-General Raz Nizri said that the government is due to meet and decide the issue this coming Sunday and that once Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the ministers decide, the process for passing a new law on the issue could start moving forward at a rapid pace if necessary.

This past Sunday, the High Court ruled that the program must end within weeks if a new Knesset law is not passed to extend and regulate it.

The justices said that the invasion of privacy was too great to allow the program to continue much longer simply based on a government decision and the state’s emergency regulations.

Nizri had requested a seven-day extension, so the fiveday extension was a small rebuke to urge the government to decide whether it would continue with the Shin Bet surveillance or choose a different path.

While Yamina MK Ayelet Shaked said it was clear that the program should continue, Yisrael Beytenu MK Eli Avidar said that the government had misled the committee by underplaying alternative options for following corona trends such as those being used by other countries.

On March 31, the subcommittee approved extending the program until April 30 with an eye toward allowing it to continue even without a new Knesset law, with some changes and limitations.

In multiple instances where the government might have wanted broader and vague language regarding the surveillance program, the committee members insisted back in March on a more explicit list of what the agency could and could not do with the new surveillance powers.

Committee legal adviser Miri Frankel Shor emphasized that granting the Shin Bet these surveillance powers over Israeli citizens went against every definition of the agency’s mission until now, which has been to fight national security threats from non-citizens, such as Palestinian terrorists.

However, Frankel Shor recommended approval of the program, subject to limitations and continuous oversight in light of the overarching goal of saving lives and the unique situation.

During the hearing, Avidar raised his voice against the idea, implying that everyone in the room was allowing the opening of a Pandora’s box and that there would be powerful officials who would later try to use the information collected by the Shin Bet in ways the Knesset did not intend.

While the hearing was mostly respectful, at one point Ashkenazi pushed for the Health Ministry to agree to limit the Shin Bet from collecting information of third persons who came into contact with an infected person for less than 15 minutes.

Committee member MK Moshe Yaalon (Telem) objected that the committee should not micromanage the agency, to which Ashkenazi responded that unless an infected person came into direct physical contact with a third party, there should be a tight leash on what kinds of people it could technologically follow.

Referring to what information the Shin Bet can collect from infected citizens’ cell phones, the committee limited this to personal identification, location and details of whom an individual contacted, excluding the content of communications with others.

Furthermore, the committee said that the Shin Bet should transfer only those limited aspects of that collected information to the Health Ministry.

The surveillance started in mid-March when the corona crisis hit a peak.