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SZABÓ AND VISSY v. HUNGARY JUDGMENT– SEPARATE OPINION
measure, while the Grand Chamber uses the precise, demanding, qualified
criterion of “reasonable suspicion”. Judicial authorization and review is
watered down if coupled with the Chamber’s ubiquitous criterion, because
any kind of “suspicion” will suffice to launch the heavy artillery of State
mass surveillance on citizens, with the evident risk of the judge becoming a
mere rubber-stamper of the governmental social control strategy. A
ubiquitous “individual suspicion” equates to overall suspicion, i.e., to the
irrelevance of the suspicion test at all. In practice, the Chamber condones
volenti nolenti widespread, non-(reasonable) suspicion-based, “strategic
surveillance” for the purposes of national security, in spite of the
straightforward rebuke that this method of covert intelligence gathering for
“national, military, economic or ecological security” purposes received from
the Grand Chamber in Roman Zakharov. Only the intervention of the Grand
Chamber will put again things right.