Justice Minister Yariv Levin announced on Thursday the establishment of a new committee that will monitor the use of cyber surveillance and data collection tools.
Levin intends to ask the government to give the committee investigative powers according to sections 9 through 11 and 27(b) of the Law on Inquiry Commissions - 1968.
The committee will be empowered to review the conduct of the police, the prosecutor's office, and their supervisory systems in all matters relating to the execution of procurement, surveillance, and data collection operations used both on private individuals and public office holders.
The Pegasus affair has prompted this change, with the minister stating that the committee will be established to reestablish the public's trust in the government after the incident.
Levin continued by saying that all of this was necessary to create comprehensive regulations and to provide a normative foundation for the use of advanced technological tools.
He also emphasized the need to simultaneously protect the right to privacy and to give law enforcement agencies effective tools to fight crime and corruption.
The committee will include Moshe Drori, former deputy president of the Jerusalem District Court, as chairman. The other members will be former public defender Attorney Inbal Rubinstein and former Head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Shalom Ben Hanan.
"The citizens of Israel are entitled to privacy and to the fact that any investigative procedure will be conducted in accordance with the law and with due care for the rights of the interrogated, the witnesses, and everyone else concerned," Levin said.
What was the Pegasus affair?
The Pegasus affair involved the misuse of Israeli spyware by the Israel Police. The software was developed by the Israeli company NSO and was sold to various countries worldwide. Various public and private figures inside Israel were hacked illegally and had their data taken and misused. The same happened in other countries and raised the question of Israeli technology being misused by authoritarian states.