The ISA's Ministerial Review Committee issued its recommendations • About one-third of patients identified to date have been hospitalized by the ISA

• Illustration // Photo: Istock, GettyImafes

The ministerial committee that examined the ISA's activities in recent weeks concluded that the organization has very limited capacities for indeed Corona patients not during the closure. The committee was chaired by Minister Yuval Steinitz, and members were Ministers Amir Ohana and Zeev Elkin. The committee held many meetings with the ISA, Ministry of Health and Justice and other bodies.  

As mentioned, one of the committee's conclusions was that the capability of locating corona carriers, with the public moving freely around the state, is very limited. The ministers have ruled that there is no other body, civil or private, that can achieve better results - but these capabilities still lose their effectiveness significantly. 

The committee presented its conclusions to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and recommended, among other things, steps that could be taken by civil servants, as well as the development of additional capabilities that would allow for wide-scale retention in the entire country. Without these tools, the committee argues, the partial control that exists today in locating the sources of infection will dissolve.

It should be noted that the recommendations require the approval of the Government and the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Data collected so far, out of some 15,000 known Corona carriers in Israel, one-third were infected by their family members, one-third were from overseas or unknown, and one-third were spent by the ISA. 

High Court: Continued telephone collection requires legislation 

The committee's recommendations come at the same time as the Supreme Court ruling (Sunday) restricting the issue of telephone retrieval. The Supreme Court ruled that as of Thursday, April 30, as the state seeks to continue to use the technology available by the ISA to fight the spread of the corona virus, This authority should be enacted in primary legislation, however, as the legislative process remains, the validity of the accreditation decision may be extended for an additional short period of time not exceeding a few weeks to allow the completion of this process.

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The Judges' Composition, chaired by Supreme Court President Hayes and taken by Justices Noam Solberg and Deputy Chief Justice Hanan Meltzer, today received petitions directed against the government's decision to authorize the General Security Service, with the approval of the Intelligence and Secret Services Subcommittee, to implement technological measures to monitor the nation's citizens and residents The fight against the spread of the Corona virus. It has been stated, as the State seeks to continue to assist the ISA after 30 April 2020, it will have to begin a process of primary legislation, which must be completed within a few weeks at most. 

The President of the Supreme Court insisted that the outbreak of the Corona epidemic and its spread led to a change in living arrangements in Israel and around the world and that under these unique and exceptional circumstances, the government was empowered by section 7 (b) (6) of the ISA law to make a decision to operate the ISA. This is to use his technological means to conduct epidemiological investigations designed to locate people who have come into close contact with authenticated patients and to inform them that they should enter home isolation.

The above section of the Shin Bet Law, it states, allows the government, with the approval of the Intelligence and Secret Services Subcommittee, to authorize the Shin Bet to carry out activities in the field that are not at the core of security activity in the narrow sense, which is necessary to safeguard and advance "essential national security interests." The state "and when there is grave and immediate danger to the citizens of the state and its inhabitants or to its regime.