Perhaps good news [The Slovak Constitutional Court cancelled mass surveillance of citizens]

[Ben Mezger]

http://www.eisionline.org/index.php/sk/projekty-m-2/ochrana-sukromia/109-the-slovak-constitutional-court-cancelled-mass-surveillance-of-citizens

ASCII:

An act, which ordered large-scale mass surveillance of citizens (so called
data retention) is now history. Today the Constitutional Court of the
Slovak Republic proclaimed the mass surveillance of citizens as
unconstitutional. The decision was rendered within proceedings initiated by
30 members of the Parliament on behalf of the European Information Society
Institute (EISi), a Slovakia based think-tank.
In a non-public session, the Grand Chamber of the Constitutional Court (PL.
ÚS 10/2014) proclaimed provisions § 58(5) to (7) and § 63(6) of the
Electronic Communications Act (Act No. 351/2011 Coll.), which until now
required mobile network providers to track the communication of their
users, as well as provisions of § 116 of the Penal Code (Act No. 301/2005
Coll.) and § 76(3) of the Police Force Act (Act No. 171/1993 Coll.), which
allowed access to this data, to be in contradiction to the constitutionally
guaranteed rights of citizens to privacy and personal data. As a
consequence, these provisions lost their binding effect.

According to now invalid provisions of the Electronic Communications Act,
the providers of electronic communications were obliged to store traffic
data, localization data and data about the communicating parties for a
period of 6 months (in the case Internet, email or VoIP communication) or
for a period of 12 months (in case of other communication). Hence, data
about who, for how long, when, how and from where the communication was
made, has been stored. Data about unsuccessful calls was also stored to the
same extent. Moreover, the legal framework regulating the access to data
retention data was completely arbitrary and much more benevolent than
comparable provisions on wire-tapping.

The obligation to store data, presented, for a long time, perceivable
interference with the private life of all Slovak citizens, who were subject
to extensive surveillance irrespective of their honesty or innocence.
Although the detailed reasoning of the Court is not available yet, it is
clear, that this kind of interference with a citizen's right to privacy
will not be possible in the future.

Today's decision of the Slovak Constitutional Court confirmed that the
initiative started by EISi more than five years ago was substantiated. “The
mass surveillance of electronic communications of Slovak citizens led to
years of continual unconstitutional violations of their privacy”, stated
Ľubomír Lukič, EISi's lawyerand one of the original initiators of the
action.

The decision of the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic was issued
almost a year after the Court of Justice of the European Union proclaimed
the Data Retention Directive invalid in the Spring of 2014. At that time,
the Constitutional Court of Slovakia promptly reacted by suspending the
collection of data through a preliminary measure. Today, data collection
was completely cancelled.

-- 
Kind regards,

*Ben Mezger*
www.benmezger.com
GPG Public Key
<http://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x7C19F16D575B7C1C>
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