CENTRUM FÖR RÄTTVISA v. SWEDEN JUDGMENT
“interference” to what is “necessary in a democratic society” (see Roman
Zakharov, cited above, § 232; see also Klass and Others, cited above, §§ 49,
50 and 59; Weber and Saravia, cited above, § 106; and Kennedy, cited
above, §§ 153 and 154).
(ii) Whether there is a need to develop the case-law
254. In Weber and Saravia and kingdom and Others (cited above) the
Court accepted that bulk interception regimes did not per se fall outside the
States’ margin of appreciation. In view of the proliferation of threats that
States currently face from networks of international actors, using the
Internet both for communication and as a tool, and the existence of
sophisticated technology which would enable these actors to avoid
detection, the Court considers that the decision to operate a bulk
interception regime in order to identify threats to national security or against
essential national interests is one which continues to fall within this margin.
255. In both Weber and Saravia and Liberty and Others (cited above)
the Court applied the above-mentioned six minimum safeguards developed
in its case-law on targeted interception. However, while the bulk
interception regimes considered in those cases were on their face similar to
that in issue in the present case, both cases are now more than ten years old,
and in the intervening years technological developments have significantly
changed the way in which people communicate. Lives are increasingly lived
online, generating both a significantly larger volume of electronic
communications, and communications of a significantly different nature and
quality, to those likely to have been generated a decade ago. The scope of
the surveillance activity considered in those cases would therefore have
been much narrower.
256. This is equally so with related communications data. It appears that
greater volumes of communications data are currently available on an
individual relative to content, since every piece of content is surrounded by
multiple pieces of communications data. While the content might be
encrypted and, in any event, may not reveal anything of note about the
sender or recipient, the related communications data could reveal a great
deal of personal information, such as the identities and geographic location
of the sender and recipient and the equipment through which the
communication was transmitted. Furthermore, any intrusion occasioned by
the acquisition of related communications data will be magnified when they
are obtained in bulk, since they are now capable of being analysed and
interrogated so as to paint an intimate picture of a person through the
mapping of social networks, location tracking, Internet browsing tracking,
mapping of communication patterns, and insight into who a person
interacted with.
257. More importantly, however, in Weber and Saravia and Liberty and
Others (both cited above), the Court did not expressly address the fact that it