CC-BY-SA: Maplemusketeer
On Monday, May 19, the Jerusalem District Court denied a freedom of information petition filed by The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) seeking an order that would compel the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to provide ACRI with the number of warrants issued by the Prime Minister to execute security wiretaps over the past five years, including the number of people – and the number of the Israeli citizens and residents – covered by such warrants.
ACRI intends to appeal the District Court’s decision to the Supreme Court.
Attorney Lila Margalit, Director of Human Rights in the Criminal Process Program at ACRI, filed the petition. “We cannot accept a claim that while the Prime Minister approves secret security wiretaps, he does not know how many such wiretaps he approves each year. We did not ask who is being listened to or why. All we asked for was information that should be elementary in a democratic country (much like the regular publication of the number of criminal wiretaps authorized by judges): how many warrants for secret security wiretaps have been issued by the Prime Minister over the last five years?”
Additional Materials
The full judgment of the court (in Hebrew).
Further background on the petition.
