חוק הסמכת שירות הביטחון הכללי לסייע במאמץ הלאומי לצמצום התפשטות נגיף הקורונה החדש (הוראת שעה), התש"ף-2020Law Authorizing the General Security Service to Assist in the National Effort to Limit the Spread of the Novel Coronavirus (temporary provision), 2020 · automatic translation · suggest a correction

Official summary of the law (Knesset)

The Law allows the Ministry of Health to receive assistance from the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) for the purpose of processing technological information from the mobile phones of individuals diagnosed as coronavirus patients, and of those who came into contact with them in the 14 days preceding their diagnosis. This is so that people who came into close contact with coronavirus patients can be instructed to enter isolation due to concern that they were infected with the virus. It was determined that the Government may declare the authorization of the Shin Bet in one of the following three situations: A. More than two hundred new patients were diagnosed on the same day. B. The Government was persuaded that there is a need for assistance from the Shin Bet in individual and unique cases in which it is not possible to complete the identification of persons who came into close contact with a patient through epidemiological investigation using other methods. C. Additional exceptional circumstances occurred that were supposed to be listed in an addendum to the Law, but no such circumstances were established. The declaration will be laid before the Knesset and before the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. In addition, the Government will appoint a team of ministers to examine the need to continue the assistance from the Agency, taking into account the state of morbidity, the contribution of the assistance activities' results to reducing the spread of the disease, and the existence of alternatives, while considering the infringement of the right to privacy. Arrangements were established regarding information security at the Ministry of Health and the Shin Bet, provisions regarding data deletion, restrictions on the transfer of information between bodies, and a requirement that anyone exposed to the information be authorized to do so by a senior official and sign a confidentiality declaration. In addition, the Law requires the publication of information on the Ministry of Health's website and biweekly reports to the Knesset Committee for Agency Affairs from the Ministry of Health and the Shin Bet regarding the data collected. The Government's declaration will be valid for 21 days.

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What was said in the plenum

The bill seeks to authorize the Israel Security Agency to assist in locating people who had contact with coronavirus patients by tracking cellular phones, in order to break infection chains and reduce the need for general lockdowns. The debate in the plenum centered on whether this is a necessary and effective tool for dealing with a renewed outbreak of the epidemic, or a severe and unjustified violation of privacy and civil rights through the use of covert security tools against the public, noting that even the head of the Israel Security Agency himself was cited as having expressed discomfort with using the tool for this purpose.

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An automatic summary of the plenum transcripts: the debate on the bill at every reading it was voted on. Arguments are given as the speakers made them; this is not an assessment. The list of speakers comes from the transcript, without a model. A very long debate: every speech was shortened to the same length before summarising. Transcripts of the sittings: 1, 2 · write to the author

Reservations to the second reading

57 reservations were filed: proposed changes to the text the committee brought to the second and third reading.

The reservations sought mainly to transfer the authority to operate and oversee the Israel Security Agency from the Agency and the Attorney General to the Government, the Knesset, and the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, to reduce the scope of information collected and its retention periods, and to add mechanisms for transparency, reporting, and protection of individual rights, including journalists.

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By faction

• Yesh Atid – Telem opposition · 55 reservations · 16 members
• Yisrael Beytenu opposition · 29 reservations · 7 members
• Joint List opposition · 26 reservations · 15 members
• Meretz opposition · 13 reservations · 3 members

A joint reservation counts for every faction whose members filed it.

Asked to speak: Merav Michaeli (Labor)

Proposers and reservation numbers are extracted automatically from the committee version, and the count is checked against the numbers printed in it. The descriptions are an automatic summary. Committee version for the second and third reading (PDF) · write to the author