Amendments to the Law on the National Security Agency (ANB), which are in the parliamentary procedure, represent an opportunity to additionally standardize the work of the Agency and thereby improve the protection of citizens' rights, according to the Alternative Institute (IA).
"The priority issues that need to be further regulated are the destruction of their data that is not of a security nature, security checks for obtaining citizenship and the internal control of the ANB", according to Dina Bajramspahić from that non-governmental organization.
According to her, these are some of the proposals for the additional improvement of the legal framework for the work of the ANB that the IA submitted to the competent Committee for Security and Defense.
In IA, they believe that keeping personal data in secret files is a violation of the right to respect for private life, and that their excessive, collateral collection should be reduced.
"Therefore, we recommended that amendments to the Law on the ANB prescribe the obligation to submit the collected data to the Supreme Court for evaluation of the legality of the application of the measures after the implementation of secret surveillance measures," said Bajramspahić.
This, as she clarified, means that immediately after the "judge's reading", a part of the material that does not relate to the reasons for which the measures were taken, or that concerns other types of personal data that are not of a security nature, would be destroyed, while the rest of the material would be kept in the registers.
In IA, they also consider it necessary to legally regulate all issues related to security checks for the purposes of obtaining citizenship.
"Since the details of the procedure are not prescribed by law, the right to a legal remedy of the person who received a negative opinion has been neglected to be standardized. It is therefore necessary to give the persons who did not pass the security check the right to familiarize themselves with the collected material on the basis of which a negative opinion was given and the opportunity to challenge it," said Bajramspahić.
According to her, practice has shown that the security check related to citizenship is one of those that requires additional standardization, because it directly affects the lives of citizens.
"However, there are several types of security checks, so the adoption of a special law on security checks, modeled on the models of this law from comparative practice, should also be encouraged," according to the IA.
The NGO reminds that back in 2012, they pointed to the insufficient results of the internal control of the ANB's work.
Bajramspahić said that the chief inspector, who is responsible for the internal control of the work of that body and who submits reports on the performed control to the Government, had never established illegal application of secret surveillance measures or other forms of abuse in his work until 2012, nor did he submit reports to the Government and to the director of ANB.
That is why, she believes, the Law on ANB should prescribe the obligation to submit an annual report on the work of Internal Control to the Committee for Security and Defense.
"This would increase the parliament's pressure on the internal control to continuously monitor and assist in the prosecution of officials who exceeded their authority and violated the law," said Bajramspahić.
In particular, as she stated, it is important to delete the provision of the Law on ANB that limits the individual right of MPs, members of the Security and Defense Committee, to request data and information from the ANB, and thereby harmonize that act with the Law on Parliamentary Oversight.
IA also submitted to the Assembly recommendations related to informing citizens about the measures that were applied to them without a prior written request.
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