The House legal committee will convene again on Thursday to discuss plans to change the framework regarding the authorities’ access to people’s private communications, with many MPs remaining dissatisfied with the government’s plans.

Two weeks ago, the government had put forward a bill which foresees that decisions to access private communications will be taken by the Cyprus intelligence service chief, who will then inform a three-member committee within 72 hours of such a decision to monitor an individual’s private communications.

However, since then, Disy, the largest party in parliament, has decided that it will table an amendment which would reinsert into the bill a stipulation that the authorities acquire a court warrant before accessing private communications.

Previous plans laid out by the government had foreseen that the attorney-general of the day would be given the authority to issue written approval to intercept private communications, though these have now fallen by the wayside.

It had also been heard at other committee sessions that anyone found to have conducted unlawful surveillance could face up to ten years in prison.

Nonetheless, Akel MP Andreas Pasiourtides had said on Monday that opinion among committee members appears to be coalescing around the government’s current plans.

That appraisal seems to have been corroborated by MP Irene Charalambides, who is now of former auditor-general Odysseas Michaelides’ party, Alma.

She said that “we cannot come and give additional powers, completely unchecked, to the attorney-general”, though of the composition of the new committee she did say that “personally, I would prefer that there be three former supreme court judges”.

Nonetheless, she said she is willing to accept the current plans, as, in essence, they are a carbon copy of an already existing three-member committee which oversees the activities undertaken by the Cyprus intelligence service, which is also currently chaired by a former judge.

At the time, committee chairman and Disy MP Nicos Tornaritis had said that the three-member committee appointed to examine ex post facto decisions to intercept and access private communications will be chaired by a high-ranking former judge, who has either served as the chief justice of a district court, of the supreme court, or of the constitutional court.

Its other two members, he said, will be “persons of recognised prestige”.

He also promised that MPs will “provide all the guarantees and tools which the law enforcement agencies need to deal with organised crime”, before saying that he hopes that the required 38 of Cyprus’ 56 sitting MPs will vote in favour of the plans.

The plans require 38 votes, rather than a simple majority, because they entail an amendment to Article 17 of the Republic of Cyprus’ constitution.

That article states that “every person has the right to respect for, and to the secrecy of, his correspondence and other communication if such other communication is made through means not prohibited by law”.

It adds that “there shall be no interference with the exercise of this right, except that in accordance with the law and only in cases of convicted and unconvicted prisoners and business correspondence and communication of bankrupts during the bankruptcy administration”.

The government’s planned changes will require that it invoke the “doctrine of necessity” to change the constitution’s Article 17.

The “doctrine of necessity” was borne out of the effective collapse of the bicommunal Republic of Cyprus as constitutionally envisioned in 1963 with the ejection of Turkish Cypriots from their constitutionally mandated positions within the state. It allows the Greek Cypriot community to unilaterally change the constitution in parliament.