CENTRUM FÖR RÄTTVISA v. SWEDEN JUDGMENT
sifted and, in any event, the risk that they would be retained for further
scrutiny beyond the automatic processing stage was virtually non-existent.
161. The Government thus requested the Grand Chamber to declare the
application inadmissible for lack of victim status or to find that there was no
interference with the applicant’s Article 8 rights.
162. As to other admissibility issues, the Government stated that they
did not have objections regarding the exhaustion of domestic remedies.
(b) The applicant
163. The applicant considered that the relevant two conditions for
claiming victim status in applications concerning the very existence of a
legal regime for secret surveillance, as enunciated in Roman Zakharov
(cited above), were satisfied in the present case.
164. In particular, the Signals Intelligence Act permits the interception
of any communications travelling along the cables that cross the Swedish
border, or that are transmitted via the airways, and therefore, according to
the applicant, directly affects all users of such communication services.
Even though only communications relating to foreign circumstances are
allowed to be intercepted, virtually all users of communications services
may engage in cross-border communications, either deliberately by
contacting a foreign recipient or inadvertently through communicating via a
server located abroad. Also, the Signals Intelligence Act permits
interception for development purposes unrelated to foreign circumstances.
165. The applicant also submitted that there is no effective remedy at the
national level for the applicant or for anyone suspecting that they may have
been subject to bulk interception by the Swedish authorities. Therefore, the
applicant must be able to have its case examined by the Court and can claim
that the very existence of the impugned regime amounts to an interference
with its Article 8 rights.
3. The Court’s assessment
166. As the Court noted in Kennedy and Roman Zakharov (both cited
above), in cases concerning secret measures, there are special reasons
justifying the Court’s departure from its general approach, according to
which individuals cannot challenge before it a domestic law in abstracto.
The principal reason is to ensure that the secrecy of surveillance measures
should not result in them being effectively unchallengeable and outside the
supervision of the national judicial authorities and the Court (see Roman
Zakharov, cited above, § 169).
167. It is now settled case-law that several criteria apply in assessing
whether an applicant may claim to be the victim of a violation of his or her
Convention rights allegedly occasioned by the mere existence of secret
surveillance measures, or legislation permitting secret surveillance