The Government wants to agree with the PP on the new Classified Information Law (which will replace the Francoist Law on Official Secrets) and the reform of the law on prior judicial control of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), announced on Thursday in the Congress of Deputies for President Pedro Sánchez during a plenary session on the
Pegasus case
spying on Catalan pro-independence politicians.
Government sources admit that these two regulations, which affect the core of State security, must have the support of the main opposition party, which has alternated with the PSOE in the Government of Spain for the last 40 years.
The sources consulted assure that they will seek to approve these laws with the maximum support, but they admit that priority will be given to the PP, since it would not be understood to agree them only with the coalition or investiture partners.
More information
Sánchez assures that he was unaware of the espionage to the independentistas, but he justifies it
The same sources admit the difficulty of reaching an agreement of this depth with the PP, with which the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) has not even been unblocked.
But they do not renounce to achieve it and remember that the PP supported the admission for processing of the reform of the National Security Law, currently in Congress.
02:02
Sánchez announces the reform of the law on official secrets and greater control of the CNI
The debate on the
Pegasus case
It has served Sánchez to make three announcements that affect the secret service.
The first is the approval of a new Intelligence Directive, the document in which the Government sets the informative objectives of the CNI.
This directive must be approved annually, but it has not been renewed since March 2019, so a document that was prepared in full trial of the highest officials of the
procés
remains in force .
The directive is approved by the president at the proposal of the interministerial commission for Intelligence Affairs, so the Government is sufficient on its own to carry it forward.
On the other hand, the reform of the Organic Law Regulating the Prior Judicial Control of the CNI must be approved by an absolute majority of Congress.
Sánchez has not given many clues about the content of this reform and has limited himself to pointing out that it is about "strengthening the control guarantees" of the intelligence service and adapting its regulatory framework "so that it can successfully face the new challenges technological and social.
More explicit was the Ombudsman, Ángel Gabilondo, who in his report on the
Pegasus case
warned: “The twenty years that have passed [since the approval of the law], the impressive technological evolution of the last decades, the changes that will come in the near future, the 'acceleration' of communication and information technologies must lead to open a reflection on the sufficiency or insufficiency of the existing judicial control […].
Communications interception does not mean the same thing in 2022 as it did in 2002, nor will it mean the same thing in a few years.”
That is to say, a law designed to control the interception of voice conversations by conventional telephony serves to authorize the infection of mobile phones with spy programs such as Pegasus that allow all stored information to be stolen, remotely activate your microphone or camera or send messages impersonating the identity of the user.
The PNV spokesman, Aitor Esteban, intervenes this Thursday in Congress to account for the espionage with Pegasus suffered by himself and by independence leaders. Luis Sevillano (EL PAÍS)
The PNV has also presented a bill that seeks to increase from one to three the number of Supreme Court magistrates who must unanimously approve interceptions and, above all, move from a "prior" control to a comprehensive one, so that magistrates should also be informed
afterwards
of the execution of the interceptions that they approve to verify that they comply with what was authorized.
The PNV has also been presenting, since 2016, successive initiatives to reform the current Official Secrets Law, which dates from 1968, with adjustments in October 1978, before the entry into force of the Constitution.
The PP and the PSOE have colluded ever since to block the processing of the reform, resorting to parliamentary maneuvers such as indefinitely extending the deadline for submitting amendments.
Now, however, Sánchez has promised that he will submit a Classified Information law (new name of the law) to Congress after the summer.
This bill was already included in the Government's legislative plan for this year, but sources from La Moncloa recognized a few weeks ago that it was not a priority.
The
Pegasus case
has given it a new impetus and the Executive will have to remove from the drawer the draft that an interministerial commission, led by then Vice President Carmen Calvo, prepared last year and which indicated that the "top secret" documents would be under lock and key. least for half a century.
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