Azernews.Az

By Abdul Kerimkhanov

The Armenian National Assembly has approved in the second and final reading amendments to the law regulating intelligence operation by law enforcement authorities.

As Armenian media reports, the amendments to the law vests the police with the authority to carry out phone tapping for surveillance. The previous law reserved the powers only to the Armenian National Security Service (NSS).

The law will facilitate the process and save time in terms of organizational matters and the motions filed to the NSS by authorized bodies seeking the actions, according to the authors.

The Cabinet, however, had not approved the bill.

The Justice Ministry had said that giving the police the authority to conduct phone-tapping would require major financial expenses. It had also noted that currently the law on criminal procedures is being revised and it will, in turn, lead to revising the law on intelligence activities.

The bill was adopted with 97 votes in favor, 20 against and one abstention.

Rights defenders are wary about the bill that allows the Armenian police to tap citizens' phone calls, Caucasian Knot reported on January 22.

Nina Karapetyants, a rights defender and the head of the Helsinki Association of Armenia, believes that such wiretappings were conducted earlier, but "the granted additional powers will make it possible to tap phone calls for any reason."

She emphasized the NSS had tapped citizens’ phone calls before, even without a court sanction, especially in high-profile cases, such as Jirair Sefilian’s one (leader of the Founding Parliament opposition group).

In turn, a rights defender and the head of the NGO “Journalists for the Sake of Law” Zhanna Aleksanyan treats the expansion of police’s powers as “an invasion into humans’ privacy.”

---

Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz