Romanian Senate president Calin Popescu-Tariceanu wants to submit a bill for the establishment of the National Authority for Intercepting Communications.

The institution will be an independent entity controlled by a supervision committee made up of judges and MPs.

He said that Romania needs to return to “normality”, and that Romania’s citizens shouldn’t feel “terrorized” like in the ‘50s that “seem to be returning," reports local Hotnews.ro.

“The authority will have as main objective the supervision, interception, recording, listening, primary verification, stocking, and sending the data and information that are of interest for the national security (...) in collaboration with other information and protection authorities,” reads the draft law.

The bill will be submitted to the Parliament.

In March this year, the Government adopted an emergency decree on interceptions, after a Constitutional Court decision by which the Intelligence Service and other secret services lost the right to carry out wiretaps in criminal cases. According to the decree, the prosecutors and the criminal investigation bodies will be the only ones able to enforce the mandates of technical supervision provided in the criminal investigation files independently using the infrastructure of the Romanian Intelligence Service.

In mid-September the anticorruption prosecutors asked Tariceanu to take a polygraph test as they questioned him as a witness in a corruption case.

editor@romania-insider.com