Joint information note on the case law of the ECtHR and the EU Court of Justice on mass surveillance translated into Ukrainian

As we have repeatedly informed, the Supreme Court, in cooperation with the European Court of Human Rights, translates into Ukrainian the materials posted on the ECHR-KS Knowledge Sharing Platform (Knowledge Sharing Platform-ECHR), as well as translates new materials posted on this Platform.

To make it easier for you to keep track of new materials, we will inform you about the availability of translations of briefs, key topics, and guides.

This time, we would like to inform you about an extremely interesting information note on the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Union law on mass surveillance.

The information note has been prepared by the ECtHR Registry and the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) as part of their joint work to highlight case law in certain areas where EU law and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms interact.

Its key feature is that it covers the case law of both the ECtHR and the CJEU, and is one of three joint factsheets by these bodies. The other briefs are on the European Arrest Warrant and on fundamental rights and the right to be forgotten.

The ECtHR considers mass surveillance mainly in the context of the right to respect for private life and correspondence (Article 8 of the Convention) and freedom of expression in relation to the protection of journalistic communication (Article 10 of the Convention).

The EU Court of Justice analyses mass surveillance through the prism of personal data protection and the right to privacy guaranteed by Directive 2002/58/EC and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the light of Articles 7, 8 and 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

In particular, the joint information note contains a summary of:

- the judgment of the EU Court of Justice of 2 October 2018 in the case of Ministerio Fiscal, C-207/16, on the threshold of seriousness at which interference with fundamental rights may be justified. The case concerned police access to data identifying users of telephone numbers activated by a stolen phone;

- the ECHR judgment of 13 February 2024 in Podchasov v. Russia, no. 33696/19, which found a violation of Article 8 of the Convention due to the legal requirement for internet communications organisers to store communication data and the content of messages and transfer them to public authorities along with the means for decoding.

The Ukrainian translation of this brief is available on the ECHR-KS Knowledge Exchange Platform at the following link:
https://ks.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr-ks/mass-surveillance-ukrainian.