A decree set since August 10 has sealed a wide range of Costa Rican security information from public view, including records of which companies win government security contracts. The dispute over it sharpened Wednesday when a governing-party lawmaker referred to an “Operation Pegasus” during floor debate in the Legislative Assembly, then declined to say what she meant.
President Laura Fernández Delgado and Public Security Minister Gerald Campos Valverde signed Executive Decree 45870-MSP on July 27. It was published in Alcance No. 104 to the official gazette La Gaceta on August 10 and took effect immediately, without prior public consultation, because the text classifies itself as confidential and restricted. The government declared the records a state secret covering its principal intelligence and security bodies.
The declaration reaches the National Public Security Council, the National Intelligence and Security Directorate known as the DIS, and a high-level working group called Fuerza Élite, along with any other security and defense coordination directed by the presidency. It covers documents, files, budgets, operational plans and meeting recordings.
Fuerza Élite brings Fernández together on Mondays with the ministers of security and justice, DIS leadership and police chiefs to coordinate the response to organized crime. It is the same group at whose first session she ordered polygraph examinations for senior police and government officials.
The reach that has drawn the sharpest objections is financial. The decree seals command structures, technological resources, reliability-vetting protocols and their results, budget line items and spending categories. It also covers public procurement files, supplier identities, technical requirements, bids, contract awards, financing arrangements and records of how those contracts are carried out.
The government justified the measure on grounds of public interest and national security, citing the threat posed by criminal structures tied to drug trafficking, contract killing and money laundering. Disclosure, the text argues, would expose institutional vulnerabilities and endanger officials and their families.
That rationale follows a period of sustained concern about criminal penetration of the security forces themselves, including a confidential police intelligence report that flagged 116 officers along the southern border over alleged links to trafficking networks. The decree invokes articles 27, 30, 130 and 140 of the Constitution, several provisions of the General Police Law and the General Public Administration Law, along with Constitutional Chamber rulings and opinions from the Attorney General’s Office.
Wednesday’s exchange began when Frente Amplio deputy Sigrid Segura Artavia challenged the scope of the decree and asked what the government was concealing, raising the possibility that authorities might be acquiring or using technology to monitor citizens who oppose them.
She named Pegasus, the surveillance program developed by the Israeli firm NSO Group, as the cautionary example. The software can extract messages, emails, photographs and location data from a compromised phone, and can switch on its microphone and camera. NSO Group has said it sells the tool only to governments and state agencies for use against serious crime and terrorism.
Pueblo Soberano deputy Kattia Calvo Cruz replied by referring to “the Pegasus operation” and denying it had anything to do with surveillance. “The Pegasus operation is not that. It has absolutely nothing to do with that,” she said, adding that Costa Rica faces a critical security situation and that classifying sensitive security information is a power the executive branch holds and is exercising.
Calvo did not say what the phrase referred to. Segura pressed her on whether the mention amounted to confirmation that the government uses the technology, and said such a program would be worse than the presidential data-analysis unit that triggered a privacy scandal under an earlier administration.
Asked afterward by reporters to explain what she had meant, Calvo declined to give a direct answer, saying she would respond if the question were put to her in the plenary chamber. She later referred the matter to her press officer. No evidence has been presented publicly that Costa Rica has acquired or deployed Pegasus, and Calvo explicitly rejected that reading of her own words. What remains unresolved is what operation she was describing.
Legal opinion on the decree has divided sharply. Of five attorneys who reviewed the text, four concluded it is plainly unconstitutional. Constitutional scholar Rubén Hernández estimated that slightly more than 90 percent of it would fail a constitutional review, and said only the portion concerning the DIS might survive, though not as currently drafted because it is written too broadly.
David Delgado argued that a state secret cannot be created by decree at all and requires a law passed by the Assembly, pointing to Constitutional Chamber rulings 13236-2003 and 00320-2005, which held that limiting access to administrative information through state secrecy is a matter reserved to legislation. Manrique Jiménez said a regulation cannot impose such a restriction on its own, and that any secret must be defined precisely and narrowly rather than leaving broad discretion to the executive.
Marvin Carvajal accepted that a declaration could in principle come by executive decree but said this one contravenes constitutional law, arguing the executive cannot declare state secrets wholesale. Fabián Volio was the lone defender, holding that the decree satisfies constitutional requirements because it governs a matter tied to national security, and that the reserve may properly cover documents, analyses, statistics and evidence gathered by such bodies.
The University of Costa Rica’s Freedom of Expression and Right to Information Program issued its own objection late Wednesday, saying a restriction of that breadth runs against the principles of publicity, transparency, maximum disclosure and accountability. It acknowledged that article 30 of the Constitution recognizes state secrets as a limit on access to information of public interest, but argued the provision grants no unlimited power to decide what citizens may know.
Information held by public administrations is presumed public, the program said, and may be withheld only where there is sufficient justification and express legal authorization. It noted that Costa Rica has no comprehensive law regulating state secrecy. The Inter American Press Association warned separately from Miami on August 11 that a measure of such breadth could obstruct journalism and restrict access to information of public interest, and recommended that journalists and citizens ask the Constitutional Chamber to rule on whether the decree conforms to the Constitution.
There is precedent for that route. Roughly three decades ago, a state secrecy decree covering arms purchases was challenged before the Constitutional Chamber, which never ruled because the government repealed the measure itself 78 days later. In the repealing decree, the executive of the day wrote that alongside protecting national defense it considered it equally essential to guarantee public confidence in institutions and full transparency in administrative contracting.
Opposition lawmakers have signaled they intend to test the current decree. Claudia Dobles of Coalición Agenda Ciudadana questioned why the declaration reaches contracting and the handling of public funds. Álvaro Ramírez, who leads the Liberación Nacional bench, said his party will examine the measure’s legality, singling out the confidentiality applied to DIS purchases.
The decree remains in force while those objections gather. Any challenge alleging violation of a fundamental right, such as access to public information, would go to the Constitutional Chamber, a body already at odds with the president over her claims about criminal infiltration of the judiciary. A claim that the decree conflicts with existing legislation could instead be brought in administrative court.
