The 1968 law, which defines and regulates matters classified as “secret” or “reserved,” is the law that the CNI resorts to by not disclosing publicly about the activity it conducts.
When yesterday, Tuesday, the spokeswoman of the Spanish government and Minister of Territorial Policy, Isabel Rodríguez, was asked about the alleged espionage of Catalan independence movements -alongside Arnaldo Otegi and Jon Iñarritu- she replied that ESpain is a democracy where communications are not spied on or listened to “if it is not under the protection of law and justice”.
“I want to insist on this message of calm: this is a democratic and legal country where there is no espionage, where we respect individual freedoms, where conversations are not interfered with, where communications are not intercepted if they are not protected by law. Rights cannot be limited except under the protection of the law, where justice does its work. I give them the absolute guarantee that the state works,” he said.
However, when asked whether the CNI de pegasus spy programhas said that “there are matters that, as they pertain to national security, are protected by law and are classified matters, secret matters, which I cannot tell you about, because the law forbids me to do so.”
Act 9/1968 of April 5 on Official Secrets is the current law that defines and regulates matters classified as “secret” or “reserved”. It’s a pre-constitutional law, enacted in the midst of the Franco regime, with some retouching in ’78, which no one denies is obsolete.
The law literally says that “things, deeds, documents, information, data and objects, the knowledge of which by unauthorized persons could harm or endanger the security and defense of the state” can be classified as “classified items”.
In this case, not all CNI activities can be made public under that classification. Nevertheless, as the Minister of Defense recalled, Margarita Robles, in an interview today on RTVEthe actions of the CNI are “subject to judicial and parliamentary scrutiny -in committee-“, despite the fact that not everything that is said in that committee can be made public.
Today information has been made public by The country indicates that the CNI has acquired the Pegasus program for six million euros in the last decade (although the final amount depends on its use), arguing that it would not be used in Spain.
-Who classifies the topics as secret? It is the Council of Ministers that decides what can be dangerous for the security of the state. The law also cites the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a body of the armed forces that ceased to exist in 2005.
-How long have they been classified as secret/reserved? The validity period is one of the aspects that has caused the most controversy of late. Spain is a place that contrasts with other countries in the European context because things classified as secret are perpetual secret. For example, in the United Kingdom or Sweden, documents are classified into 30 and 30 years respectively. In the US it is 25 years.
-Reform of the law on official secrets Today it is a text being prepared by a committee headed by the Ministry of the Presidency (led by Félix Bolaños), with the participation of the Ministries of Defence, Interior and Foreign Affairs. The intention of the Spanish government is for it to gather the greatest possible consensus and for it to be finally approved before the end of the parliamentary term, in 2023.
-The validity period of the secrets The PNV, through its parliamentary group, most recently pushed for reform of the Franco law on secrets. It made the proposal in 2016, it was admitted, but the processing took longer until it was dropped in March 2019. Finally, in 2020, it was re-admitted for processing, but it was excluded because the Spanish government does not agree to set a validity period of a fixed term of 25 years for the secret and 10 for the classified, without making a big distinction between them , and it was rejected in committee.
Last November, PSOE and Podemos agreed to promote a new law on state secrets in accordance with the principles of “legality, necessity and proportionality” and in line with European and international standards in this area.
Source: EITB
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
