Slovenian Intelligence Agency performed illegal eavesdropping

The Slovenian constitutional court issued a decision on 8 December 2005
ascertaining that, in 1996, SOVA (Slovenian intelligence agency) illegally
performed eavesdropping to a suspected person later sentenced for
unjustified production and trading of drugs. The most aggravating evidences
for the defendant were the telephone conversation recordings that SOVA made
for the police.

The eavesdropping and recording of telephone conversations were performed in
a way that did not exclude the possibility of abuses (montage, erasing,
later adding of recordings) and the defence could not examine the
transcriptions of the telephone conversations as the documents were labelled
as confidential.

From 1993 till 11 April 1997, on the basis of a confidential agreement, SOVA
eavesdropped and recorded telephone conversations for the police, which did
not have adequate equipment for that.

The Slovenian Constitutional Court wrote :
“With the eavesdropping and recording of telephone conversations that was
performed by SOVA and not the police, the complainant’s right to privacy
from article 35 and right to privacy of correspondence from article 37 were
violated.”
[…]
“the problems the repressive bodies have with technical equipment should
not be the reason for such intolerable violation of privacy and privacy of
correspondence and other means of communication. Violations of human rights
are not allowed in the criminal procedure, not even in the case of “extreme
necessity”.”

An intriguing fact is that there was no report about that decision of the
constitutional court in the major Slovenian media.

The whole text of the decision (in Slovenian language only)
http://odlocitve.us-rs.si/usrs/us-odl.nsf/o/2B1FA4ECCB2DFEE5C12570D90040374F

(Contribution by Aljaz Marn Privacyblog.net – Slovenia )