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Council of State: Surveillance subjects have right to be informed about collected data

The plenary of Greece’s Council of State has deemed the surveillance law unconstitutional and ruled that privacy watchdog ADAE must provide subjects of surveillance with information on the material collected.

The decision opens the way to leader of socialist PASOK/KINAL, Nikos Androulakis, a subject of surveillance, to return his request to ADAE and to ask to be informed about the reasons why he was being monitored, news website in.gr and other media reported Friday noon.

Androulakis hailed the CoS decision posting on social media:

“Today is the first victory of the rule of law against the status in statu of the wiretapping organized by the Maximos Palace [the prime Minister’s office]. Today, the Plenary of the CoE ruled unconstitutional the law your government passed to cover the wiretapping parastatal. #Wiretapping”

Androulakis appealed to CoS in September 2022, after his request to ADAE was turned down and was not informed about the reasons of his surveillance in 2021. Androulakis was a MEP, when it was discovered that the Predator surveillance system was used for his surveillance.

The CoS ruled is that the law of 2021 (4790/2021) which completely abolished the right of disclosure to surveillance subjects violates the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.

According to legal sources, the decision “unlocks” the possibility of Nikos Androulakis and other victims, to return to ADAE with a new request for the disclosure of the reasons why they were under surveillance by the National Intelligence Service EYP.

It is recalled that with the new law of 2022, the authority to notify the reason for the surveillance was reinstated for the victim, but without again giving the authority to the constitutionally protected independent authority, ADAE.

Instead, it is given to a three-member body in which, however, the two EYP prosecutors who signed the monitoring participate. In addition, the right to disclosure, by law of 2022, is activated after three years have passed since the end of monitoring.

It should be recalled that a prosecutor’s decision is needed to allow the lifting of confidentiality of communications for surveillance purposes, whatever the reason deems it as necessary.

The decision of the CoS on surveillance ruled  that the universal ban on informing the affected persons constitutes an excessive restriction of the inviolability of communication that is not justified in the context of the functioning of the just state and violates the Constitution.

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