Data and fundamental rights
This presentation provides an overview of the relationship between data and fundamental rights at the current point in time, and directions as to where and how this relationship might continue. At the basis of this relationship are the fundamental rights to privacy and free expression; however with the digital society being more pervasive, other fundamental...
European constitutional courts towards data retention laws
One of the most commonly applied measures to combat terrorism is a mechanism of telecommunications data retention. Serious doubts regarding its intrusive nature were raised. State authorities being in possession of traffic and location metadata may monitor social behavior of individuals, detect sources (journalism) or political opponents. Our paper explores constitutional limits for legislative interference...
Fundamental Rights and Security in the Digital Era – the Case of Data Retention
In the past decade, European courts have struggled with the challenge of reconciling fundamental rights and security in the digital era. Nowhere has this challenge come to the fore more acutely than in the case of data retention. In its landmark judgment of April 2014 in Digital Rights Ireland, the Court of Justice of the...
Privacy, Data Protection and National Security: The EU-Canada PNR Agreement Before the CJEU
This analysis examines the balance between the right to privacy and national security, as framed in Opinion 1/15 of the CJEU on the draft agreement between Canada and the European Union dealing with the transfer of PNR data. Moving from this case-study and taking into account previous landmark judgments on personal data (Digital Rights Ireland,...
Pre-legislative authorisation of interception of communication – a genealogy of the warrant
This archival study of the interception warrant offers a history of a secret governmental practice. Despite the lack of a coherent archival record of interception warrants, some traces remain. They reveal the changing organisational structure in which secret surveillance was operationalised. Moreover, recurrent memos and policy notes reveal the organisational steps taken to preserve official...
Secret Service Access to Metadata in Portugal: The Making of a Constitutional Trilogy?
Last August, the Portuguese Legislative Assembly approved a law that regulates secret service access to telecommunications and internet data (i.e., the identification, localization, and traffic of users of electronic communications services in the following situations: national defense; prevention of sabotage; espionage; terrorism; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; highly organized crime). Consequently, access is restricted...