Allegations of illegal surveillance were again dogging the Luxembourg intelligence agency (SREL) with reports this weekend that prompted the Ministry of State to issue a statement to the effect that unlawful surveillance had taken place as a result of a clerical error and that the records obtained as a result have been destroyed.
The ministry said that the error arose in the context of the legal requirement that extensions of time for communications surveillance must be approved by a special committee, composed of three judges, as well as an authorisation from the ministerial committee of the SREL.
According to the ministry, SREL failed to finalise one particular file which was not therefore forwarded to the committee, thus a monitoring measure was extended without the necessary authorisation. The oversight was discovered during an internal audit one month later.
According to the ministry, measures including the immediate cessation and subsequent destruction of all records in connection with the monitoring measure in question were taken to remedy the “unintentional misconduct” and necessary adjustments have been made to prevent the error from happening again.
The person responsible for the management of surveillance measures has been assigned to other tasks.
