The bill from the Minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne (Open Vld) and the Minister of Defense Ludivine Dedonder (PS) should remove a number of obstacles that the services are currently facing in the field. This gives the agents of the intelligence and security services more possibilities to infiltrate dangerous organizations, both in the virtual and in the real world. They can also commit criminal offenses under strict conditions within the scope of their assignments and may use special investigative methods on their sources to test their reliability, discretion or loyalty.
For the ADIV, the draft law also extends the ability to respond to a cyber attack. Until now, the ADIV could only respond to a cyber attack when military infrastructure was attacked. The service had the legal possibility to identify the attacker, neutralize and if necessary even respond with its own cyber attack. From now on, this will also be possible in the event of a cyber attack on systems that are not managed by the Minister of Defence.
Finally, the legal framework surrounding the internal flow of information within the intelligence services and with other Belgian security partners will be strengthened. This is happening at the request of the ADIV, in the aftermath of the case involving the radicalized soldier Jürgen Conings.
