Bulgaria violates the European Convention on Human Rights when it comes to covert surveillance and preservation and access to communication data, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday, Reuters reports.
In a lawsuit filed by two Bulgarian lawyers and two non-profit organizations in 2012, the ECtHR Chamber found that Bulgarian law did not meet the requirements of the Convention and was unable to monitor only to the required level.
The Chamber also ruled that Bulgarian laws on the retention and access to communication data could not restrict such operations to what was strictly necessary, which also violated Article 8 of the Convention.
"The European Court of Human Rights has unanimously ruled that there has been a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private life and correspondence) of the European Convention on Human Rights," the statement said.
Covert surveillance has long been a hot topic in the Balkan state, which joined the European Union in 2007, according to Reuters, recalling that a special parliamentary committee found in August that special services had eavesdropped on more than 900 Bulgarians, including politicians, journalists and activists. between the start of anti-corruption protests in 2020 until May 2021, when the former center-right government was overthrown.
The then head of the commission, Nikolay Hadjigenov, said that classified data showed the largest wiretapping and wiretapping of Bulgarian citizens in recent history, the agency also wrote.
The prosecutor's office denied that there was illegal wiretapping of politicians.
In the case filed with the ECtHR, the court found that there was a lack of proper judicial oversight of decisions to issue surveillance orders in Bulgaria. The lack of clear regulation has led to a situation where secret surveillance data can be used for unscrupulous purposes, it said.
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