Legislators from several political parties are preparing a series of amendments to curb the bill aimed at turning the Directorate of National Intelligence and Security (DIS) into the National Strategic Intelligence Directorate (DIEN).
Lawmakers Maureen Clarke and Sandra Piszk, as well as Rosibel Ramos, confirmed that they are drafting amendments to the text issued on August 16th, 2016 by the Commission on Security and Drug Trafficking of the Legislative Assembly, which was convened to extraordinary sessions by the Executive.
Congressmen Mario Redondo and Jorge Arguedas had already declared that they would file motions to the proposal, which was also objected by the Ombudsman.
According to the explanatory memorandum of the project, to turn the DIS into the DIEN is just a way to fill legal vacuums, to delimit the State intelligence function, to establish a board to avoid abuse in the management of information and to prevent the new entity from being used to make political espionage.
Risks:
-An entity with too much power attached to the Ministry of the Presidency would be created.
-The DIEN could carry out telecommunication interventions.
-It would attack privacy, human rights and individual freedoms.
-The country could avoid the expense that its operation would represent.
The legislators concluded that the DIEN would continue to be a political police controlled by the Presidential House, something very different from what a real institution, providing state security services, must be.