Viestinnän yksityisyyden suojan turvallisuusperusteinen rajoittaminen perustuslakivaliokunnan käytännössä
Avainsanat:
valtiosääntöoikeus, luottamuksellisen viestin salaisuus, henkilötietojen suoja, telepakkokeinot, perustuslakivaliokunta, turvallisuusAbstrakti
Lakimies-aikakauskirjan nuorten kirjoittajien palkinto 2017
Security-based limitations to the protection of communications privacy in the praxis of the Constitutional Law Committee
The article studies how security-based limitations to communications-related privacy rights are construed in the praxis of the Constitutional Law Committee of the Finnish Parliament. The focus of the study is on coercive measures affecting telecommunications and telecommunications data retention measures, which mainly impact the rights to secrecy of communications (section 10(2) of the Constitution), the protection of personal data and the protection of private life (section 10(1)).
In its praxis since the fundamental rights reform of 1995, the Constitutional Law Committee has mainly given a broad interpretation to the limitation condition “necessary in the investigation of crimes that jeopardise the security of the individual or society” (section 10(3)). Coercive measures powers have been broadened in the personal, temporal and material dimensions. In particular, the Committee has expanded the scope of crimes jeopardising security beyond violent and drug crimes to other, less serious types of crime. The Committee has traditionally held that telecommunications traffic data falls outside the core of the right to secrecy of communications, essentially lowering the protection of that data. In its evaluation of telecommunications data retention, the Committee has focused more on the legality and precision of the rules and less on their material impact on the right to protection of private life. However, in some recent statements, the Committee has distanced itself from such formalist review due to the impact of some recent case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union.
An important element in the way the Committee has justified communications privacy limitations is the system of prior court review. Academic research and the Parliamentary Ombudsman have detected numerous shortcomings in the way that review is conducted in practise. This casts doubt on the validity of the Committee’s arguments.
