Espionage and Colombian regulations, integrity of the Social State of Law and National Security

Abstract

The risks of traditional espionage, where foreign or national citizens make contact with foreign security agencies or non-state actors, represent possible ways for the leakage of State information, as well as a vulnerability to potential damage to be done in the national territory, whether against strategic assets, national citizens or foreign interests present in Colombia.

The normative measures in Colombia, set forth in the Penal Code, Law 599 of 2000, stipulate the apprehension of any individual or group of individuals, arrested and tried for compromising secrets of a vital nature for the security of the State. The architecture of the Social State of Law, defined by the Political Constitution of 1991, demands the primacy of the parameters of human rights and IHL, as a principle of legality that extends to cases of espionage executed by nationals and foreigners.

The prevention of the entry or eventual expulsion of foreign citizens accused of espionage is under the authority of Migration Colombia; the national intelligence and Counter intelligence bodies carry out functions of tracking, prevention and monitoring of possible infiltration by external or internal actors, but the ultimate management of both the situation of permanence or legal status of foreign citizens accused of espionage is the responsibility of the Migration agency and the judicial system in charge of defining the criminal action.

Consequently, the research objective aims to observe how the guaranteeing sphere of IHL and the commitments of National Security coexist in the face of the phenomenon of espionage in Colombia; in view of which as a hypothesis it is considered that the dispersed nature of the normative context in charge of typifying such activities, affects the applicability of criminal measures, in such a way that the decisive path is the activation of protocols of expulsion of the individual or groups of foreigners related to cases of espionage.