Bulgaria's Ruling Party Pledges to Restrict Wiretap Use

Kalin Georgiev, Secretary General of the Interior Ministry, may be authorized to sign SRS permits if GERB-initiated legal amendments are passed. Photo by BGNES

MPs from Bulgaria's ruling center-right party GERB plan to table legal amendments drastically restricting the use of special surveillance devices.

A special working group consisting of GERB MPs, experts from Bulgaria's Interior Ministry and the Council of Ministers have said that the proposals will be given a priority review after the Parliament's summer recess, according to accounts of Bulgarian Trud daily.

The use of special surveillance devices (SRS) is an extraordinary step to be resorted to only if the other methods for gathering evidence under the Bulgarian Criminal Procedure Code cannot be applied for the uncovering of grave crimes punishable by over five years of imprisonment.

GERB also plans to propose an amendment stipulating that a judge can request the materials from the pre-trial proceedings and from the investigation involving classified national security information before authorizing the use of SRS.

The step is to give magistrates the opportunity to make an informed decision about the necessity of the extraordinary measure, instead of placing their signatures under the requests as a pure formality, as is the case now.

Citizens are also to be allowed to notify the responsible parliamentary subcommittee if they suspect their communications are being tapped. If the authorities find evidence of unauthorized use of special surveillance devices, the citizens will be informed of the situation so that they can seek redressal in a court.

Under another important draft amendment to the Special Surveillance Devices Act, the Secretary General of the Interior Ministry will take over the responsibility for issuing permits for the use of SRS. At present, the permits are approved by the Interior Minister.

The Secretary General of the Interior Ministry is the highest-ranking civil servant within the structure and is also the one in charge of monitoring operative investigation activities, receiving reports of the results of SRS use, etc.

According to the working group, the above set of responsibilities makes it only logical to entitle the Secretary General to sign the SRS permits.

The planned shift in authorization is expected to require additional amendments to the Interior Ministry Act.

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