• Home /
• Statewatch Database /
• Belgium: Report shows "intelligence is a European Issue"

Belgium: Report shows "intelligence is a European Issue"

01 November 1998

In its fifth annual report the Belgian Permanent Intelligence Oversight Commission also known as "Committee R" demonstrates that, in at least 2 concrete cases within the EU, intelligence has become a Europe-wide issue rather than a specifically national affair. On space observation, the 1998 report says US intelligence would not hand over its pictures to the Service General de Renseignement (SGR, Belgian military intelligence) but merely "showed" them before removing them away after the meeting; the US also only provided its own analysis of the imagery. In addition, said a Committee R spokesperson,

"the Gulf war in 1990-91, Bosnia in 1995 and surveillance of the Kurdish region in Iraq in 1996-97 made it clear the US reserved the right to cut or censor the satellite information it turned over to its allies."

The committee also revealed that a breakdown in the Schengen Information System (SIS), that led to data leaks in Belgium between 1995-97, was due to a security lapse that has yet to be rectified. The Dutch underworld, using the services of a young lawyer employed by the Belgian "Sirene" Committee - the control point for data downloaded into the SIS computer system by each country in the Schengen zone - managed to get its hands on the case-notes of various people that had been circulated across the European community. The lawyer, who was arrested in November 1997, had only been subject to a check as to whether he had a criminal record or was known to the domestic security agency Surete de l'etat. This could be due to a poor translation of the rules implementing the SIS that leaves it unclear whether a government can opt for a mere security check (French-language version) or a full-scale inquiry (German and Dutch version).

Intelligence Newsletter 15.10.98