The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee on Tuesday night ended the police’s special coronavirus-era authority to perform warrantless searches of citizen’s homes to check that they are quarantining as required.
Deciding to end that authority came alongside an agreement to extend most of the corona-era emergency powers granted to the state for an additional 45 days pending ongoing consideration of a new bill to permanently set the balance between civil liberties and coronavirus-related enforcement powers.
Due to various technical issues, the 45 day extension was passed as a new law, but a long-term structure for managing corona, enforcement and civil liberties will still need to be hammered out down the road.
Warrantless-searches were considered important by the Health Ministry and the police when the coronavirus wave was peaking in Israel, the courts were mostly closed down and time was of the essence in catching quarantine-violators.
However, as time has worn on, much of the general public has turned against special enforcement powers that go beyond what the police could normally do.
Yesh Atid-Telem Chairman MK Meir Cohen said that the opposition, “in excellent cooperation with the Committee Chairman Yaakov Asher [UTJ], succeeded in amending the Emergency Regulations in order to guard the public’s health without harming its privacy rights or the right to protest.”
The compromise of allowing most emergency powers to continue, while stripping out the special coronavirus-era police warrantless search authority came as the committee had already agreed to drop that authority from the longer-term law which is eventually expected to be passed.
However, despite having reached agreement days ago on stripping that power from the forward-looking bill, there was intense disagreement about stripping that power effective immediately.
As of Tuesday night, it was unclear who, besides the police and likely certain apolitical Health Ministry officials, had dug in to maintain the power, but there was doubt late into Tuesday evening about what the outcome would be.
For his part, Asher thanked Health Minister Yuli Edelstein, Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn and Public Security Minister Amir Ohana “who helped to bring about the requested changes” (though most of the coalition MKs were physically absent from Tuesday’s hearings).
In addition, the committee temporarily suspended many of the penalties which the state can use against violations of corona-era emergency regulations pending passage of the final new bill.
Earlier in June, the committee started to strip away corona-era restrictions on prisoners coming to court hearings and on lawyers visiting detainees in prison.
When the government declared a state of emergency due to the pandemic in mid-March, much of the courts were closed and even those judges still holding in-person hearings had strict restrictions on how many persons could be in a courtroom at once due to social distancing.
The Israel Prison Service also restricted the public, including lawyers, from entering prisons, claiming it was needed to protect prisoners and the public from spreading infection.
Prior to that, Shin Bet Director Nadav Argaman talked the Cabinet out of extending corona-era powers for the Shin Bet to perform surveillance of infected citizens.
Once Argaman got the Cabinet to back off of continuing those Shin Bet powers, the various Knesset committees started to be more active in stripping out other corona emergency powers which were considered to have infringed on civil liberties.
No other democracy had used their intelligence agencies to perform such surveillance, though many have pressed their citizens to voluntarily download an application to their cellphones in order to perform the surveillance.
Others had convinced cell phone companies to hand over citizens’ data in order to follow coronavirus trends.
Since taking office in May, Nissenkorn has emphasized that any long-term bill must limit emergency powers and protect privacy.
Some of the provisions he initially flagged included: The Knesset and the courts will continue to function even during a general nationwide corona emergency; the right to protest is protected; and initially, a corona emergency is supposed to last only 30 days.