CENTRUM FÖR RÄTTVISA v. SWEDEN JUDGMENT
Therefore, as noted by the Chamber, Swedish law gives a clear indication of
the period after which a permit will expire and of the conditions under
which it may be renewed.
333. As also noted by the Chamber, however, there is no provision
obliging the FRA, the authorities mandated to issue detailed tasking
directives or the Foreign Intelligence Court to cancel a signals intelligence
mission if the conditions for it have ceased to exist or the measures
themselves are no longer necessary.
334. Before the Grand Chamber, the applicant considered that the lack
of provision for the cancellation of permits when no longer needed opened
the door to excessive and inappropriate surveillance for several months until
the warrant eventually expired on its own. In the applicant’s view, this
shortcoming was very significant, given the sheer volume of information
that could be obtained through bulk interception in that time. The
Government stated that an interception operation would be discontinued if it
was no longer needed, if a tasking directive was revoked or if it was not in
accordance with the permit.
335. The Court is of the view that an express provision on
discontinuation of bulk interception when no longer needed would have
been clearer than the existing arrangement in Sweden according to which,
apparently, permits may or may not be cancelled when circumstances
warranting such a cancellation come to light in the period before the expiry
of their six months’ validity.
336. The significance of this shortcoming should, however, not be
overestimated, in the Court’s view, for two main reasons. First, Swedish law
provides for relevant mechanisms, such as the possibility for the requesting
authority to revoke a tasking directive and for supervision by the
Inspectorate, both of which can lead to the cancellation of a bulk
interception mission when the conditions for it have ceased to exist or it is
no longer needed. Second, by the nature of things, in the context of signals
intelligence within foreign intelligence the implementation of a legal
requirement to cancel a permit when no longer needed must in all likelihood
be heavily dependent on internal operative assessments involving secrecy.
Therefore, in the specific context of bulk interception for foreign
intelligence purposes, the existence of supervision mechanisms with access
to all internal information must generally be seen as providing similar
legislative safeguards against abuse related to the duration of interception
operations.
337. For the reasons set out above, the Court finds that Swedish law
satisfies the requirements concerning duration of bulk interception of
communications.
338. The Chamber made the following findings concerning the
circumstances in which intercept data must be erased and destroyed, at
paragraphs 145 and 146 of its judgment:
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