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The chairman of Belgium’s Committee R, which oversees the functioning of State Security and the General Intelligence and Security Service at the military level, Serge Lipszyc, says he will be on the lookout for any external interference in Belgium’s elections, to be held on 26 May.
“Regarding the general context of the upcoming elections, I shall be particularly attentive to the collection and information methods,” Lipszyc said in an interview published on Wednesday in the Sudpresse newspapers. “We’ll see how the law on this issue is applied.”
The committee chairman was referring to the interference noted during the 2016 U.S. elections, but made no reference to any foreign country.
“We’ll see if in Belgium we have the tools to make sure the elections go perfectly well,” he said. “In 2019, the intelligence services will have detect any possibility of external interference liable to modify the election result.”
“Because of ‘fake news’, there is a risk that a State can be fragilized,” he added. “However, our democracies are already quite fragilized. That’s why our two intelligence services and the Committee R are concerned and aware of this issue.”
Jason Bennett
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