Is Armenia’s proposed wiretapping bill unconstitutional?

If passed, an amendment to Armenia’s current law on intelligence-gathering operations would give police the authority to wiretap telephone conversations of private citizens independently from the National Security Service (NSS). Such a legislative amendment would do little to secure Armenians’ constitutionally mandated privacy rights from the threat of continued unlawful surveillance from authorities. 

The amendment’s authors, governing party-affiliated MPs Armen Khachatryan and Sipan Pashinyan (the Prime Minister’s nephew), have presented this legislative package as a necessary tool for police reform, which would provide the civilian police service with the necessary independence to act as a government watchdog. They argue that “the police need this tool as a mechanism of checks and balances to monitor and prevent overstepping [of constitutional boundaries] by other government bodies.” They also contend that had such legislation been in place earlier, it could have prevented the March 1, 2008 massacre which saw the deaths of eight protesters and two police officers in post-election unrest. According to this logic,  the police would have been in a position to uncover a conspiracy by the NSS to cover up the planned violent intervention earlier, and thus put a halt to the ensuing events. The government so far has signaled its opposition to the amendment, but it has already been approved by the Standing Committee on Defense and Security.