Cabinet to approve new coronavirus emergency powers bill on Monday

Critics are worried that despite the law’s limits, citizens’ private information will be abused by various government agencies or foreign actors.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz attend a cabinet meeting on Sunday (photo credit: HAIM ZACH/GPO)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz attend a cabinet meeting on Sunday
(photo credit: HAIM ZACH/GPO)
The cabinet on Sunday announced it would approve a new coronavirus emergency powers bill on Monday and then send it to the Ministerial Committee for Legislation and the Knesset.
Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz support the legislation, a cabinet statement indicated.
Due to the ministers’ decision to debate the issue for two days instead of one, the cabinet has requested that the Knesset Subcommittee for Intelligence, Secret Services, Captives and Missing Soldiers hold a hearing on Monday to extend the deadline for the government to bring the legislation before the Knesset from Monday to Wednesday.
Some of the key parameters of the bill are still unclear and may evolve during the impending Knesset debate over it. Overall, it normalizes many of the emergency powers the state has been using since March, while imposing a greater degree of limitations.
Regarding the key question of who will monitor crisis-level coronavirus trends, it appears that despite heated debates in the Knesset for the last 10 weeks, the government still prefers to have the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) take a key role.
No other democracy has used its intelligence agencies to perform such surveillance, though many have pressed their citizens to voluntarily download an application to their cellphones to perform the surveillance. Others have convinced cellphone companies to hand over citizens’ data to follow coronavirus trends.
In a statement on Friday, Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn emphasized the bill’s aspects that will limit emergency powers and protect privacy.
The provisions he flagged include: The Knesset and the courts will continue to function even during a general nationwide coronavirus emergency absent some additional specific reason; the right to protest is protected; policemen cannot enter a residence without a warrant; initially, a coronavirus emergency is supposed to last only 30 days.
Additional limits include: The Knesset can end the emergency despite government objections; lockdown orders for a specific city or area will be initially limited to one week; the state will take the country’s economic needs into account; the government will repeal restrictions as soon as the danger passes, Nissenkorn said.
Other provisions deal with prisoners’ rights and access to their lawyers during the coronavirus period. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel criticized policy on prisoners’ rights, saying the bill makes it too easy to block lawyers’ access to the prisons. Based on past experience, ACRI said it was concerned the Prisons Service would ignore the new law and add new stringent restrictions on prisoners.
However, critics of the use of emergency powers since mid-March had demanded a date and limit for them, for the use of Shin Bet surveillance, or at least a clearer set of benchmarks for ending the surveillance and emergency-powers period.
In recent Knesset debates, despite pressure from opposition MKs and civil-society NGOs, the Likud and Blue and White appear united to continue Shin Bet involvement in coronavirus-related surveillance. This is despite the growing voices that techniques used by other countries could be sufficient and less invasive of people’s privacy.
Previously, National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat and Health Ministry officials claimed to the Intelligence Subcommittee that other methods are insufficient because of Israel’s large haredi (ultra-Orthodox) sector, whose restricted cellphones cannot be accessed without Shin Bet technology.
They also claim that the agency’s technology is superior, that speed is crucial in preventing a second wave and that around a third of coronavirus-infected citizens were found by the Shin Bet.
Critics note that 93% of those sent into quarantine due to Shin Bet warnings were not infected and that the technology is not as useful if the coronavirus wave either drops or spikes dramatically. Furthermore, they are worried that despite the law’s limits, citizens’ private information will be abused by various government agencies or foreign actors.
Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee chairman Yakov Asher (United Torah Judaism) on Sunday told KAN radio he would seek to make it harder for the government to lock down certain areas. The haredi community was hit hard by the coronavirus and had several of its neighborhoods locked down.
The government intends to pass a law on the coronavirus issue within weeks to satisfy a late April order by the High Court of Justice, which said the state could not maintain emergency powers without properly debating and passing new legislation.
Meanwhile, the Justice Ministry on Sunday announced it was moving forward with a new bill to deal with the spike in bounced checks during the coronavirus era. The bill will give a reprieve to checks that bounced between March 4 and June 22, but it will crack down on people whose checks bounce outside that period.