Parliament okays fast-track constitutional change

The parliament on Wednesday authorized that the constitution can be amended in a fast manner so that the process to pass a new intelligence law will be much quicker.

The move got 178 votes for and 13 against, and the 5/6 majority required for a fast change of constitution was attained.

Without the authorization given, a constitutional amendment needs to be approved by two consecutive parliaments, and thus a new intelligence bill would have to take effect only after the next parliamentary election in April, 2019.

This constitutional change will give the security police and military intelligence more power and lower the threshold of allowing the inviolability of a message to be tampered.

The details of the new intelligence legislation being processed in the parliament are not available, but the intention is that the security police and the military intelligence department will have the right to intercept communications even when no concrete suspicion of a crime or its preparation exists inside or outside Finland.

Under current legislation, investigators must show concrete suspicion of a crime and they have to be able to name the individuals whose communication is targeted.

Since the submission of the intelligence bill to the parliament last February, several demands for amendments from the opposition have been accepted. For example, the target of a communication investigation will at some stage be told about having been investigated.

The social democrats have told the media that they have been given assurance that the source protection of journalists, and the privacy of confessions to a priest and the privacy of medical documents will be respected. The new laws are not supposed to make possible a mass surveillance of communication.

A special intelligence ombudsman will have the right to watch the court sessions where intelligence operation is authorized. A parliamentary committee is to be the controller of the secret police.