Parliament's committee that oversees the security services has approved the 2025 annual report from the National Bureau for Control of Special Surveillance Means. The report covers how special surveillance tools are used and applied. It also looks at access to data under the Electronic Communications Act. MPs voted 5 in favor and 3 abstentions.
Bureau chairman Plamen Kolev presented the findings to the committee. Last year the bureau focused on how surveillance data is stored, used and destroyed.
A check at an interior ministry unit found documents containing surveillance results that should have been destroyed but had been left in an operational file. A record at the unit stated that the data on optical and paper media had been destroyed, but the check found that only the optical media and the accompanying letters had actually been destroyed.
The bureau held 46 meetings in 2025 and adopted 364 decisions. It carried out 262 checks, 49 of them triggered by complaints from members of the public.
There were 4,318 requests to use special surveillance means against people and locations. Judges granted 3,782 of these and turned down 536. Special surveillance was used against 2,442 people. It was also used at 68 locations to identify individuals suspected of planning or committing a serious crime.
Most requests came from the interior ministry, 63.08%, followed by the prosecution service with 20.02% and the state security agency DANS with 10.82%.