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Constitutional Court: Covert surveillance based on ministerial permission does not violate the right to privacy

standpoint 2013-11-28 | Fb Sharing

Constitutional Court: Covert surveillance based on ministerial permission does not violate the right to privacy.

In its decision made in November 2013, the Constitutional Court of Hungary did not found to be in contradiction to the right to privacy that the power of a counter-terrorism organization to collect covert intelligence upon citizens is based on a simple ministerial permission without a court warrant.

In June of 2012, we filed a constitutional complaint against the Act on the Police which has failed before the Constitutional Court. In the constitutional complaint, we objected that the Hungarian counter-terrorism organization is allowed to search our homes, take samples of and record by technical means anything they find, open our mail and sealed packages addressed to us, accessing and recording the contents thereof, intercept and record our electronic communications, access and record our data forwarded by means of or stored on computers, as well as make use of the same without a court warrant. We declared that such inspection should be tied to judicial approval. Since the Court rejected our complaint, we will turn to the European Court of Human Rights.

For the constitutional complaint in English, click here. (The decision is only available in Hungarian.)

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