Romanian Intelligence Service

The Romanian Intelligence Service (Serviciul Român de Informaţii, abbreviated SRI) is the Romanian domestic intelligence service.

Activity
The agency has been officially created on March 26th 1990. The official attributions of SRI are the gathering and processing of information that is relevant to the national security.

SRI is a non-repressive agency. The agency (or any agents on its behalf) are not entitled to any inquiry or official investigation. Its role is to gather sensitive information and hand it over to relevant institutions, such as MApN.

The agency officially collaborates with 60 other foreign intelligence agencies.

SRI is authorized to intercept phone calls or any other form of telecommunication or radio waves.

National Alert System
The National Alert System (Sistemul Național de Alertă Teroristă in Romanian) is the Romanian terrorist barometer. SNA is a system that, based on existing intelligence from SRI, SIE and possibly other agencies, ranks the risk of a terrorist attack on Romanian territory. The system is color based (green-low to red-imminent). The color can be changed (and therefore security measures increased) with the prior approval of the executive of SRI.

Currently, SNA is colored blue-cautious; this means that the intelligence on hand suggests there is a relatively low risk of a terrorist attack.

The color has only been changed once (to red-high) at the 2008 NATO Bucharest summit.

History and notable events
The predecessor of SRI was Securitate. Securitate ceased to exist in 1989. SRI took over the buildings, staff, equipment and virtually everything that belonged to the previous agency. Over the years, the activity of SRI has been unknown.

A possible controversy (that has been constant since 1990) is the fact that SRI was used (by the executive) to illegally tap the phones of dignitaries and other public figures. However, no official confirmation has yet been made, although the president of the Group of Political Investigations (a Romanian organization that independently monitors the activity of state agencies), Mugur Ciuvică, has stated that he has evidence of this.

On 28th of February 2008, the Romanian counter-intelligence officers arrested a Bulgarian military attache, Petar Marinov Zikolov, and a Romanian NCO, Floricel Achim. They have been prosecuted with charges of espionage. It is believed that the leaked information might have been sent to Russia or Ukraine. The Bulgarians have denied any connection with Zikolov. This has been one of the few espionage cases that have received media attention.