The European Court of Human Rights decided a fewer days ago that Polish law does not defend citizens from excessive surveillance of services and interference in their private lives. What action do you anticipate from the authorities now?
First of all, the introduction of a legal instrument available to each of the citizens – due to the fact that in practice each of them can touch. The individual whose data was accessed or eavesdropped should be notified of this fact by the state authority. This can, of course, take place with an yearly or six-month delay, due to the fact that informing him before the wire is triggered would miss the target. And it's not about undermining the effectiveness of peculiar services. A citizen must besides have the right to complain to an independent court. And the eavesdropping authority or the receiving of its data in any another way – the work to appear in front of it on an equal footing with specified a citizen. That would be the most crucial change, due to the fact that present we do not know how long and whether we have been eavesdropped at all, nor do we have the anticipation to appeal this decision. I believe that this will be the best way to discipline the Polish state before utilizing the highly invasive instruments at its disposal. It is crucial to remember that Pegasus is only a clear example of this, due to the fact that it was allegedly financed by the Justice Fund, but the ways of violating the confidentiality of our communication and correspondence or the right to respect private life are countless.
Do you request an independent body to control the services?
Creating it is not the only solution, due to the fact that there are different models in the world. It is surely essential to introduce multi-level supervision of peculiar services involving public trust entities independent of both them and political power. An institution designated to carry out specified supervision must not only accept and reject requests from the services but must besides actively enter into their activities on all level. Show initiative, request explanations, request information.
The disclosure by the Ministry of Justice of the scale of the judges' surveillance consents, including those relating to Pegasus, would be the first step to guarantee greater transparency?
Of course. Statistical data should not be protected at all due to the fact that they are public information. Their disclosure would not compromise the interests of the peculiar services, on the contrary, it would show the scale of the phenomenon, which in itself could be information about abuse.
What is today's review of the judges' approval for surveillance?
The conclusions come from the head of service and police. They are being examined at a secret law firm by a justice on duty. In tiny rooms, frequently without windows, it is expected to admit respective twelve applications within respective hours. They frequently contain many annexes, although the services are not obliged to supply the justice with all the information they know. If the justice gives his consent, it is adequate that he signs the applicable decision and does not gotta compose a message of reasons, and the only individual who could complain about it – and who, for apparent reasons, will not do so – is the applicant for consent. If the justice refuses, the message of reasons must be written and the applicant may submit a complaint. Then specified a decision can be repealed, and no justice wants it. I so believe that the full operational control oversight strategy is designed to deter judges from giving their refusals. In fact, due to the urgency of these cases, it prevents the judges from getting to know the arguments of the services. Unless the results of the wiretaps are later utilized during criminal proceedings – and for present only a twelve percent are utilized in this way – the curious individual will never know. And in the course of the judge's examination of the motion, there is besides no citizen's spokesperson to critically look at the documents. The justice himself does not know what eavesdropping looks like from the method side: technology, the kind of software used. In practice, this leads to a phenomenon of blank consent.
