The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has told the
Portuguese ministers for justice and the interior that anti-terror
laws proposed in Europe have shown a lack of understanding of human
rights law and says that anti-terror laws could be written which
would safeguard privacy rights.
"I fear that messages such as 'no right to privacy until life
and security are guaranteed' are developing into a mantra
suggesting that fundamental rights and freedoms are a luxury that
security can not afford," said EDPS' Peter Hustinx. "I very much
challenge that view and stress that there should be no doubt that
effective anti-terror measures can be framed within the boundaries
of data protection."
The EDPS is the privacy advisor for the EU's governing bodies
and has been increasingly critical of some of the legal measures
put in place and some of the activity of EU bodies in the name of
anti-terrorism.
Hustinx has criticised a proposal from the EU Council of
Ministers on how to deal with data protection in matters of
policing and justice, where he said there was a danger that
information could be passed to bodies not concerned with law
enforcement.
In the past he has also criticised the activities of payments
body SWIFT and said that a ruling by the European Court of Justice
on the transfer of airline passenger data to US authorities left
Europeans' data potentially exposed.
Hustinx told the Portuguese ministers that European politicians
were making increasingly alarming statements on the issue of
compromises of citizens' privacy. He singled out comments made by
Home Secretary John Reid at a recent G6 summit in Venice.
"The Home Secretary of the United Kingdom, Dr John Reid, called
for human rights law to be rewritten, stating that 'The right to
security, to the protection of life and liberty, is and should be
the basic right on which all others are based'," wrote Hustinx in
his letter to Portuguese justice minister Alberto Costa.
"This position could be potentially
dangerous and may produce more problems than it seeks to solve. Not
only does it reveal a lack of understanding of the current
framework of human rights in general, and data protection
legislation in particular, which both enable proportionate measures
that are necessary for public security or defence, it also ignores
the lessons learned about the abuse of fundamental rights from
dealing with terrorism within Europe's borders over the last 50
years.
"There should be no doubt that effective anti-terror measures
can be framed within the boundaries of fundamental rights. It is
these rights that need to be protected under all circumstances in a
democratic society," wrote Hustinx.
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