Publicaties

The two European Courts (the European Court of Human Rights, ECtHR and, to a lesser degree, the European Union Court of Justice, EUCJ) have contributed greatly to the development of a legal framework for surveillance by either law enforcement agencies in the criminal law area or by secret services. Both courts put great emphasis on a system of control ex ante and post hoc by independent supervisory authorities. A complex and controver- sial ...

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The surveillance society has significantly been discussed in social sciences over the last ten years. Phenomena like terrorist threats and illegal migration flows on the one hand and an anxious western population on the other seems to legitimize a considerable growth and sophistication of databases and surveillance technologies. Surveillance technologies may lead towards a more secure society for some. However they also have a profound ...

Smart home technologies (SHT) are becoming more and more widespread. The commodification of the household and the surveillance of family life by companies have understandably sparked numerous questions. It should not be forgotten, however, that SHT also bring family members convenient tools to surveil each other. Parental and partner surveillance, further referred to as intimate surveillance, have rarely been studied with regard to the smart ...

A comparative study between passive and active surveillance based on herd visits (villages) was conducted over a period of 24 months. It included 106 surveillance stations of the animal disease epidemiological surveillance network in Chad distributed randomly into 52 stations of active surveillance and 54 stations of passive surveillance. Nine diseases of various vaccination and expected prevalence status were monitored. The active surveillance ...

To comprehend contemporary surveillance in Brazil, especially under Bolsonaro’s administration (2019–2022), it is crucial to revisit the country’s most authoritarian period, the military dictatorship (1964–1985). During this period, the National Information Service (SNI) was established as a state intelligence agency and played a pivotal role in monitoring and suppressing dissent, setting the stage for future surveillance practices in Brazil. ...

Surveillance technologies and practices are widely used by police and security forces today. They represent the cornerstone of modern investigative methodologies and techniques and their added value is associated with effectiveness and smartness. Although the way surveillance technologies and practices operate is pretty known, their manifold and subtle effects on human rights are mostly unknown and obscure. This is particularly the case when ...

If one looks at the case law of the European Court of Human Rights on surveillance matters, a well mature set of principles emerge, namely: legality, legitimacy, proportionality (the standard check) and, if the Court is "on it", also necessity and subsidiarity (the closer scrutiny check). We pass the surveillance case law and the principles developed therein in review and note that 1) not all surveillance is considered relevant to the right to ...