The Citizens’ Initiative for Oversight of the Intelligence System (ICCSI) expresses concern over the National Intelligence Law reforms introduced by the Executive Branch through Decrees 614/2024 and 615/2024.
There is no doubt that the Argentine national intelligence system requires profound reforms to modernize it and adapt it to a landscape that has changed dramatically in recent decades, including the rise of new technologies and a geopolitical order that is no longer defined by a unipolar or bipolar agenda. At the same time, the system requires decisive changes to its political and organizational culture oriented toward espionage and illegal operations. The tensions between a tradition rooted in secrecy and the need to strengthen oversight have driven the back-and-forth of partial modifications that have never managed to take hold.
The Milei government’s reform by emergency decree does not resolve these problems; it exacerbates some, and brings back others. The dissolution of the current Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) to reinstate the State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE) aims to reorganize the intelligence apparatus along old lines, without making it clear why doing so will make the agency more effective or how it will improve the protection of rights. Carrying this out by decree raises serious constitutional issues.
One of the most regressive features of the reform is that it once again opens the door for the judiciary to use intelligence agencies as auxiliaries for its investigations. The Executive Branch is reinstating a practice that had been prohibited because of the grave abuses it enabled. In the AMIA case, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights held the Argentine State responsible for the failure of the judicial investigation, a failure shaped by the decision to leave that investigation in the hands of the former SIDE. This authorization is further accompanied by the possibility that the SIDE may rehire retired personnel, as though the system’s operational problems could be solved by reverting to past practices.
This purported reorganization does not alter the fundamental structure in which the agency maintains a robust domestic intelligence function alongside its foreign intelligence work. The decree further blurs any divide between these two activities by creating bodies whose functions are unclear and may lead to intentional overlaps. The new Federal Cybersecurity Agency (AFC) and National Security Agency (ASN) are particularly troubling: their roles and powers are poorly defined, and the decree extends their authorities in ways that pose a risk to individual privacy. With respect to the AFC specifically, the decree empowers it to provide services for the “acquisition, interception, collection, processing, evaluation, and analysis of all information relevant to the National Intelligence System” – a new mechanism for conducting interceptions not previously authorized under statute. All of this has been done in a covert manner and without the parliamentary debate that the matter requires.
Over the past few decades, political scandals stemming from intelligence operations, including abuses that led to human rights violations, have sparked debate about the need to strengthen parliamentary and independent oversight of intelligence agencies. This reform does not advance any of these goals and in some respects weakens them—for example, by removing the Senate’s role in confirming the head of the agency. We have argued that the Bicameral Commission for the Oversight of Intelligence Agencies and Activities has been complicit at times and inconsequential at others. None of that changes under these reforms. Nor does the decree make any progress toward establishing independent oversight bodies, as exist in other countries, which help provide a counterbalance to the culture of secrecy that has characterized our system and that this reform further entrenches.
At ICCSI, we have carried out various initiatives to promote a discussion of the design and operation of the national intelligence system, with the aim of giving it strategic coherence, democratizing it, and separating it from criminal intelligence work. This new reform does not represent progress in any of these areas.
We insist that this debate must take place in the National Congress and in full view of society. That is why we also reaffirm our urgent call for the convening of the Bicameral Commission for the Oversight of Intelligence Agencies and Activities.
About ICCSI
ICCSI is a coalition of organizations comprising the Latin American Institute for Security and Democracy (ILSED), the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), and the Vía Libre Foundation, working together to strengthen democratic oversight of the intelligence system and orient it toward greater effectiveness and alignment with the actual needs of the state.