European Human Rights Court Rules Mass Surveillance Illegal (theregister.co.uk)

Kekke sends this report from El Reg: The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that mass surveillance is illegal, in a little-noticed case in Hungary. In a judgment last week, the court ruled that the Hungarian government had violated article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to privacy) due to its failure to include "sufficiently precise, effective and comprehensive" measures that would limit surveillance to only people it suspected of crimes. Under a section of the 2011 National Security Act, a minister of the government is able to approve a police request to search people's houses, mail, phones and laptops if they are seeking to protect national security. ... The court said the Hungarian government should be required to interpret the law in a narrow fashion and "verify whether sufficient reasons for intercepting a specific individual's communications exist in each case." Or in other words, every individual case must be looked at carefully and a decision made on each. Which is clearly impossible if the law is taken to carry out mass surveillance, i.e., hoovering up information over the internet and then searching in it."

Comments

Unimportant.

[SuricouRaven]

The ECHR ruled over a decade ago that even prisoners have a right to vote. The UK replied 'we'll get right on it' and promptly did nothing at all. We've been in violation of their ruling for all that time, and there's nothing they can do. Our prime minister even openly brags that we are ignoring the ruling*. This will be no different. The ECHR doesn't actually have an effective enforcement mechanism, should a member state choose to ignore them.

*http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20053244

Re:Unimportant.

[locofungus]

The ECHR ruled over a decade ago that even prisoners have a right to vote.

No they didn't!

What they ruled is that you cannot have a blanket ban on prisoners being unable to vote.

I think this makes sense. A prisoner who is in prison for one day which just happens to be election day loses any say over their government for the next 1800 days. A prisoner going to prison one day earlier for one day would have all the rights to vote of someone who didn't go to prison.

The EHCR doesn't say which prisoners must be given the vote, just that it cannot be a blanket ban. IANAL but I think a case-by-case analysis that just happened to give no prisoners the vote would be legal.

It's similar to the rulings that you cannot have a life sentence without hope of parole. And for the handful of notorious prisoners which this applies to, each home secretary says "never be released on my watch" which is fine according to the ECHR, just that a government cannot (try to) bind future home secretaries to the same.

Re:Why is Europe helping terrorists?

[davester666]

Clearly, the EU needs to step up to the plate and start passing more laws that are vaguely worded and overly generic, but with the verbal promise they won't be abused. You know, like what the US has been doing, since, well, I don't know when they started, but it was a long time ago.

Once they get this program ramped up, pretty much everybody will have violated some law, at least technically, so therefore, mass surveillance becomes completely legal.

Everybody wins. Well, except for the commoners. Fortunately, they don't matter.