Month: March 2013

Traditional opacity of intelligence services is an outdated concept and the National Security Agency (NSA) should also take a more proactive role in bringing their work to the public in accordance with best practices and standards of transparency.

We call upon the Head of NSA to make steps toward increasing transparency and reveal information about the scope of secret data collection implementation by the NSA.

Recently, the Serbian Security-Information Agency (BIA) has published annual data on the precise number of insights taken into the telephone and Internet communications contents. The Head of BIA announced that such data will be published regularly from now [1]. A positive example from the neighboring contry shows that Montenegrin intelligence service’s fear that the publishing of this information will endanger national security – is exaggerated.

NSA is significantly behind other Montenegrin security and defense institutions in terms of proactive information disclosure in accordance with the principles of free access to information. The last statement was posted on the NSA website on November 2010 year, and the total number of announcements is three.

Undertaking active steps by the NSA in terms of greater transparency will contribute to greater public confidence in the legal work of the NSA. We believe it is necessary that NSA publishes on its website all the laws and regulations not labeled “secret” that regulate its operations, beside the Law on National Security Agency. Also, NSA should publish the approved NSA budget for the current year, budget execution reports; data on public procurement that were not confidential, including: calls for a public procurement procedure, the decision to award the contract and public procurement contracts, as well as the organizational structure of the NSA.

Opposition members of the Parliamentary Committee for Security and Defense often express assessments of that NSA unnecessary labels certain acts as confidential. NSA should reconsider all the decisions on confidentiality classification and remove the label “secret” from unjustifiably protected documents and information. Those parts of the annual report on the NSA’s work whose disclosure does not jeopardize national security should also be published in accordance with the principles of transparency and accountability.

Finally, it is necessary to initiate Amendments to the Law on the NSA. It is necessary to define in more precise manner the provision considering supervision of electronic communications and postal deliveries, in a way to explain what is included under electronic communications supervision, which is not the case. Provision of the Act must be precisely aligned with the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights stating that the communication contents should be at the same level of protection as well as data from base stations and IP addresses. On the same basis, it is necessary to adopt a specific provision applicable to the listings access and which will include reasonable time limits for the implementation of these measures.

Dina BAJRAMSPAHIĆ
Policy Analyst

The government decides independently on the participation of members of civil defense, police and government employees in peacekeeping missions and other activities abroad. The Parliament is completely excluded from this process. Committee for Security and Defense is neither consulted regarding deployment nor informed about the participation of these state representatives in peacekeeping missions.

At the yesterday’s session, the Government adopted a decision to send two police officers to the UN peacekeeping mission in Cyprus. Representatives of the Police Directorate are present in the mission in Cyprus since 2009. During the 2012, police officers were sent to the ISAF mission in Afghanistan as well.

In contrast to the deployment of Army, the Government does not need the consent of the Parliament when deployng the representatives of police, civil defense and public administration bodies to peacekeeping missions.

Parliametnary Committee for Security and Defense is not consulted when these decision are being made, nor has it so far been informed about the activities of the representatives of the Police Directorate in the peacekeeping missions. This is particularly worrying since the Law on parliamentary oversight in the area of security and defense explicitly states the duty of the Committee to review these reports, and therefore, the obligation of competent institutions to submit them regularly.

Law governing this area was adopted in 2008 (full name: the Law on the use of units of the Army of Montenegro in the international forces and the participation of members of civil defense, police and employees in state administration in peacekeeping missions and other activities abroad), It provides that the Parliament must approve the deployment of Army representatives to peacekeeping missions. When it comes to the participation of members of civil protection and others to peacekeeping missions, the Parliament has no jurisdiction. The executive is given the exclusive and unlimited authority to decide on this important issue.

We believe that it is needed to urgently initiate amendments to the Law on the use of units of the Army of Montenegro in the international force and the participation of members of civil protection (…) to make the approval of the Parliament required when deploying the members of civil defense, police and employees in the civil administration to missions abroad. Solution that is currently in force is outdated and made obsolete through the adoption of the Law on parliamentary oversight. Furthermore, it represents an obstacle to the further development of parliamentary oversight in the area ofsecurity and defense.

Marko Sošić
Policy Analyst