The offering of additional duties to the Security and Intelligence Service (SIS) becomes extremely dangerous and can transform the Service into an entity that takes subjective and unilateral decisions, said the director of the Association for the Protection of Privacy Sergiu Bozianu. He noted that if the amendments to the law on the SIS are adopted in the current form, the institution will be able to follow persons or wiretap their phones outside criminal investigation, IPN reports.

Currently, investigative measures are taken only within a criminal case. If extra power is given to the SIS, the investigation can take place outside a criminal case. According to Sergiu Bozianu, the initiative to offer the SIS unlimited power is dangerous and leaves room for abuse.

“The goal now is to amend a number of laws in order to offer the SIS more instruments. If we give more power to this authority and ignore other authorities that defend the human rights or protect from eventual abuses, we can swiftly reach the situation when a superpower we created controls everyone and checks absolutely everyone and does it subjectively, unilaterally or according to the own convictions. Now the SIS is offered instruments to counteract eventual attacks on state security. We do not agree with the way in which these new duties were formulated. We consider these bills were designed so as to offer the SIS unlimited power. For the ordinary citizens, this means that the person could be put on the black list and have all their activities checked, starting from bank cards, assets and contacts, for any complaint, public statement or comment on Facebook,”  Sergiu Bozianu stated in a program on Radio Moldova station.

If the legislation is amended, the SIS will obtain the freedom to put into practice all the arsenal of special investigative measures without a warrant from the judge on a simple reasonable suspicion that the person can be a threat to state security.

“The special investigative measures usually include pursuing, wiretapping, bugging for following a particular person. The new law enables the special investigative measures to be conducted outside a criminal investigation,” noted Sergiu Bozianu.

The bills to amend the law on SIS also allow persons with dual nationality to be hired at the institution. This way, those from the SIS can have Moldovan nationality and also the nationality of any EU member state.