| Applicant name | KLAUDIA CSIKÓS |
| Applicant type | natural person |
| Number of applicants | 1 |
| Country | HUNGARY |
| Application no. | 31091/16 |
| Date | 28/11/2024 |
| Judges | Marko Bošnjak, President, Alena Poláčková, Péter Paczolay, Erik Wennerström, Raffaele Sabato, Lorraine Schembri Orland, Ioannis Ktistakis |
| Institution | Court |
| Type | Judgment |
| Outcome Art. 8 | violation |
| Reason | Quality of law |
| Type of privacy | informational privacy |
| Keywords | wire-tapping; journalist |
| Facts of the case | The application concerns the alleged tapping of the applicant’s telephone calls with a close acquaintance, apparently with the view of revealing her journalistic sources. It raises issues under Articles 8 and 10 of the Convention. |
| Analysis | The Court finds it relevant that in Hungarian law no provision was made for any form of notification of secret surveillance measures, not even in cases in which notification could be carried out without jeopardising the purpose of the restriction after the termination of the surveillance measure. The Court therefore accepts that the applicant was unlikely to find out whether her communications had been intercepted, making it inherently difficult for her to eventually seek a remedy for the presumed measure. It does not appear either that the applicant had access to an independent and impartial body with jurisdiction to examine any complaint of unlawful interception, independently of a notification that such interception had taken place, as demonstrated by the facts of the present case. As to the Minister of the Interior and the National Security Committee, it is certainly true that the applicant was permitted to apply to those authorities on the basis of her suspicion that her communications had been intercepted, even in the absence of a notification of interception about these oversight mechanisms for the lack of the Minister’s independence, the lack of subsequent notification of any kind and for the lack of any practical example demonstrating the effectiveness of these avenues. The Court further doubts whether they constituted adequate safeguards in the applicant’s presumed situation, where the information on the authorisation of covert information gathering remained confidential and therefore inaccessible to the person concerned. |
| Other Article violation? | Yes, 10 ECHR |
| Damage awarded | (a) that the respondent State is to pay the applicant, within three months from the date on which the judgment becomes final in accordance with Article 44 § 2 of the Convention, the following amounts, to be converted into the currency of the respondent State at the rate applicable at the date of settlement: (i) EUR 6,500 (six thousand five hundred euros), plus any tax that may be chargeable, in respect of non-pecuniary damage; (ii) EUR 7,000 (seven thousand euros), plus any tax that may be chargeable to the applicant, in respect of costs and expenses; |
| Documents | Judgment |