The disclosure of the monitoring of Prime Minister's Bureau Chief Shula Zaken's cell phone, which came to light in the course of former justice minister Haim Ramon's trial, lit a red warning light for anyone who values democracy. While only the Supreme Court president can authorize the surveillance of the prime minister, obtaining permission for a wiretap on his secretary is almost incidental. This is only one of thousands of cases each year in which the police make use of this practice in a disproportionate manner. The previous state comptroller, Eliezer Goldberg, argued that wiretaps were authorized too freely. It would appear that the situation has not improved.

Israel is a wiretapping superpower - its judges and investigators authorize them to an extent unknown in the Western world. One reason is that the police are financially strapped and tend to utilize the technological abilities of the Shin Bet security services even to investigate crimes unrelated to national security. According to figures received by the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, in 2001 a total of 1,711 wiretaps were carried out in the U.K., which has a population of 60 million. In the same year, 1,756 wiretaps were carried out in Israel, which has seven million inhabitants. The U.K. police do not contend with less crime, and their successes are greater than those of their Israeli counterparts.

The chair of the Knesset Constitution Committee, Prof. Menahem Ben-Sasson, proposed establishing a parliamentary committee of inquiry to examine the policies concerning permits to monitor the communications of Israeli citizens. The suspicion is that the cooperation between the police and the Shin Bet in this sphere increases the volume of monitoring while reducing supervision.

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A parliamentary inquiry committee is a problematic tool for examining a sensitive issue because it involves politicians; who knows how the committee will be composed and whether those serving on it will use it to settle scores with law authorities? On the other hand, the regular updates on eavesdropping submitted to the Knesset Constitution Committee are insufficient. The time has come to set new policy. The number of intercepts is increasing, judges approve the majority of the requests submitted to them and the various bills aimed at restricting wiretaps, such as the one tabled by MK Zahava Gal-On, have not garnered support.

Ben-Sasson's initiative is a welcome one, and does not go overboard as MK Michael Eitan has claimed, while admitting that he failed to properly supervise wiretaps during his own term as committee chair. Ben-Sasson wants to pass a law that enjoys the consensus of his fellow MKs. Unfortunately, he is recusing himself from sitting on the parliamentary inquiry committee that he himself is initiating to avoid the appearance of serving the interests of his own party, Kadima.

Even if the surveillance of the prime minister's secretary was the immediate catalyst for dealing with the issue, it is the monitoring of ordinary citizens by the police that will be at the center of the investigation into it.