The inspector's office did not have proper levers to control the conduct of secret hearings, Londa Toloraia says
By Liza Mchedlidze
Monday, September 19, 2022
Former inspector of personal data protection, Londa Toloraia stated that there is no lever for checking illegal wiretapping.
In an interview with TV Pirveli, Toloraia talked about the gaps in the legislation regarding the monitoring of secret investigative activities.
Londa Toloraia said that the state inspector was obliged to inform the State Security Service in advance that they were going to enter the inspection.
According to her, she was not a personal data protection inspector during the period when Gogashvili was the deputy head of the Security Service, although the legislation and practice in this direction have not been changed to date.
According to her, in the report submitted to the parliament, there was a discussion about the mentioned legislative and practical shortcomings, which were contained in the legislation in terms of monitoring of secret investigative actions, but, like the previous reports, it was also "put on the shelf."
"In the hands of the State Inspector Service, there were no appropriate legislative and practical levers to control the conducting of secret hearings by the operative-technical agency. You are forced in every case, when you decide on an operational-technical check, to contact him and tell him that I am coming.
One of the reasons why the State Inspectorate and Londa Toloraia are no longer there is precisely because we did not present these critical opinions on the existing legislation and practice. The parliament was not a tribune where we had to talk about it. Their effective lever would be a legal and practical lever for inadvertent entry when the state inspector wanted to open the door to this facility and check what was going on." Londa Toloraia said.
On September 15, the former deputy head of the State Security Service, Soso Gogashvili, released another statement on the social network.
In the post, Gogashvili described the system of illegal wiretapping by the State Security Service of Georgia.
A former high-ranking official wrote that the scope of wiretapping increased during the "Georgian Dream" period, and approximately 2,000 operational workers are involved in illegal wiretapping. GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications Networks) is allegedly being wiretapped, as well as through viruses, applications, computers. Gogashvili wrote that it is possible to equip offices.
Minister of Internal Affairs Vakhtang Gomelauri responded to Soso Gogashvili's statement regarding illegal wiretapping.
The Minister of Internal Affairs has denied all the accusations of Gogashvili and declared that Soso Gogashvili does not know Bidzina Ivanishvili personally and Ivanishvili could not order him to wiretap citizens.
