CENTRUM FÖR RÄTTVISA v. SWEDEN JUDGMENT
150. The Grand Chamber agrees with the Chamber that it cannot be the
Court’s task, when reviewing the relevant law in abstracto, as in the present
case, to examine compatibility with the Convention before and after every
single legislative amendment.
151. The temporal scope of the Grand Chamber’s examination is
therefore limited to the Swedish law and practice as it stood in May 2018, at
the time of the Chamber examination.
II. ALLEGED VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 8 OF THE CONVENTION
152. The applicant complained that the relevant legislation and practice
in Sweden on bulk interception of communications, also referred to as
signals intelligence, were in violation of its right to respect for private life
and correspondence protected by Article 8 of the Convention. The
Government contested that argument.
153. Article 8 of the Convention reads as follows:
“1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and
his correspondence.
2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right
except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society
in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the
country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals,
or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
A. The Government’s preliminary objection on victim status
1. The Chamber judgment
154. Applying the criteria set out in Roman Zakharov v. Russia ([GC],
no. 47143/06, ECHR 2015), and Kennedy v. the United Kingdom
(no. 26839/05, 18 May 2010), the Chamber considered that the contested
legislation on signals intelligence instituted a system of secret surveillance
that potentially affected all users and that no domestic remedy provided
detailed grounds in response to a complainant who suspects that he or she
has had his or her communications intercepted. In these circumstances, the
Chamber considered an examination of the relevant legislation in abstracto
to be justified and concluded that the applicant could claim to be the victim
of a violation of the Convention, even though it was unable to allege that it
had been subjected to a concrete measure of interception. For the same
reasons the Chamber concluded that the mere existence of the contested
legislation amounted in itself to an interference with the applicant’s rights
under Article 8.