(EDITORIAL from the Korea Times on Nov. 3)

Government should not use NIS for domestic politics

Few administrative agencies have undergone more frequent overhaul by the changes in
political power than the National Intelligence Service (NIS).

The nation's top espionage agency is now pushing to expand its operations to cover
almost all areas of national interest, ranging from epidemics to the environment,
under what its chief calls the ``new concept of national security.''

Well, different tasks for different times. Still, the proposed revision of the NIS
Act is raising more than a few eyebrows as to the real intention of those seeking
it, both because of the direction of such reform and because of adverse effects
another transformation of the spy agency will have on domestic politics and civil
rights.

Is the NIS' inefficiency really due to a lack of legal provisions guaranteeing its
freer operations? It seems not to be.

The NIS has recently shown incompetence in all three major areas of its activities
??? domestic, international and North Korean intelligence: It wrongly attributed the
candlelit protest against tainted U.S. beef imports to ``leftist' instigation"; was
totally unaware a U.S. geographical agency had changed its description of the Dokdo
islets; and reported the accidental shooting death of a South Korean tourist in Mt.
Geumgang later than some foreign news agencies.

Which of the three episodes could have been prevented by the legal revision proposed
by the NIS, which has also strived for easier eavesdropping of private cell phone
conversations and nearly unlimited access to personal information on top of enacting
an anti-terrorism law, which is widely called the ``second anti-communist law'' due
to its contents seriously infringing on civil freedom?

All this shows that what the NIS is lacking is not legal and institutional backup
but a more disciplined work ethic and clearer sense about what it is ??? and should
be ??? seeking.

NIS attempts to expand its domain of activities and diversify its methods worryingly
coincide with the Lee Myung-bak administration's policy to ``enhance law and order''
by toughening controls on popular demonstrations on and offline. The NIS recently
resumed investigation into pro-North Korean groups and individuals, which it had
long left to police, as well as spying on other administrative agencies and even on
court proceedings dealing with a political case.

President Lee, who is nostalgic for everything from a decade or two ago, seems to be
trying to have the NIS go back to its old days of the Korean Central Intelligence
Agency (KCIA), the foremost task of which was domestic spying.

We have seen the ill effects of the unfortunate marriage between the top
intelligence organ's self-promoting ambition with the top leader's appetite to use
it for domestic politics not just here but abroad. A case in point is the ongoing
U.S. war in Iraq, which started based on false information about Saddam Hussein's
non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Some governing camp officials are endorsing the revision of the NIS Act, seeing a
need for expanding and diversifying the activities of the spy agency, provided the
law also ``has proper devices for checks and supervision.''

Before seeking convenience in governing, these officials should first recall why
successive governments have worked toward strictly limiting the NIS' roles to areas
of national security as well as recent achievements in the democratization of this
country.

It's time for the NIS to look outward and forward, not inward and backward.
(END)