February 10, 2021
By Corina Heri, postdoctoral researcher at University of Zürich Begging can be framed in different ways. For city tourism officials, it’s a problem of branding. For local legislatures, it’s an opportunity to show a ‘tough on crime’ stance. For the people who beg themselves, begging can mean survival. But, until recently anyway, the European Court […]
July 13, 2020
Iain Cameron is professor in public international law at Uppsala University Introduction For European states, an important factor pushing towards better regulation of security agencies generally has been the ECHR. The work of “signals intelligence” agencies (collecting metadata and the content of electronic mail and voice communications) came to prominence following the allegations of “mass […]
May 20, 2020
By Jurij Toplak The ECHR’s Article 8 guarantees a right to have data related to criminal procedures reviewed and, after some time and in most cases, removed. In this blog post, I will first summarise the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR or “the Court”) on the retention, review, and removal of […]
May 05, 2020
By Ilia Siatitsa and Ioannis Kouvakas Yesterday, we argued that blanket mobile phone location tracking measures that aim at containing the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic cannot be regarded as strictly necessary due to their indiscriminate nature and the existence of less intrusive alternatives with potentially similar effectiveness. In this second blog post, we reflect […]
May 04, 2020
By Ilia Siatitsa and Ioannis Kouvakas In his recent interview on The Intercept, Edward Snowden questioned whether the measures implemented by authorities amid the pandemic are necessary to safeguard people, as well as, whether the pandemic is seen by governments as just another opportunity to make us acquiesce to mass surveillance. In a scramble to […]
March 05, 2020
Judith Vermeulen is a doctoral researcher and a member of the Law & Technology research group, the Human Rights Centre and PIXLES at Ghent University. On January 30, 2020, in the case of Breyer v. Germany, the European Court of Human Rights ruled by six votes to one that the – legally required – indiscriminate […]
January 08, 2020
By Valérie Junod and Olivier Simon On November 26. 2019, the ECtHR issued a 6 to 1 judgment finding that Russia had not breached the right of the complainants when it denied them access to methadone and buprenorphine (these two medicines are hereafter abbreviated to M/B) for treating their duly diagnosed opioid dependence syndrome (ODS). […]
December 06, 2019
Fotis Bregiannis is a doctoral researcher in the field of European Labour Law at UCLouvain. He works at the social law department of the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Research in Law, Enterprise and Society (CRIDES) and is currently writing a doctoral dissertation on EU legal instruments imposing information-related obligations on MNEs (EWC Directive, 2014/95 Directive). Argyro […]
November 27, 2019
Effie Fokas is a political scientist and a Senior Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, Research Associate of the London School of Economics Hellenic Observatory, and member of the Henry Luce/Leadership 100 project on Orthodoxy and Human Rights (Orthodox Christian Studies Center, Fordham University). She was also Principal Investigator of […]
April 18, 2019
By John Ip, University of Auckland Faculty of Law On 28 February 2019, the First Section Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered its decision in Beghal v United Kingdom, a de facto appeal from a 2015 UK Supreme Court decision concerning the question of whether Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act […]
February 22, 2019
This blogpost was written by Judith Vermeulen, PhD researcher in the Law and Technology Research Group at Ghent University. Shortly after Big Brother Watch (see also the blogpost for this case), the European Court of Human Rights again had the opportunity to pronounce itself on the compatibility of Article 8 ECHR with the collection, retention […]
October 19, 2018
By Pieter Cannoot, PhD Researcher at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University On 11 October 2018, the European Court of Human Rights found a violation of Article 8 ECHR in a case involving a transsexual woman called S.V. The application concerned the Italian authorities’ refusal to authorise S.V. officially changing her first name on […]
October 12, 2018
By Judith Vermeulen (PhD Candidate, Law & Technology Research Group, Ghent University) On 13 September 2018, more than five years after Edward Snowden revealed the existence of electronic (mass) surveillance programmes run by the intelligence services of the United States of America and the United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’) found two […]
July 09, 2018
By Plixavra Vogiatzoglou, Legal Researcher, KU Leuven Centre for IT and IP Law (CiTiP) On 19th June 2018, the Third Section of the Court, in its judgment in the case Centrum för Rättvisa v. Sweden, ruled that the bulk interception of communications scheme of the Foreign Intelligence of Sweden meets the Convention standards. This ruling […]
June 01, 2018
By Argyro Chatzinikolaou, (Doctoral Researcher), Law & Technology research group, Ghent University Recently, the Fourth Section of the Court held in its judgement in the case of Benedik v Slovenia that there had been a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) with regard to the failure of the Slovenian […]
February 16, 2018
This guest post was written by Cathérine Van de Graaf, a PhD student at Ghent University. In a judgment on 18 January 2018, the fifth Chamber of the ECtHR found no violation of the right to private and family life in Fédération Nationale des Syndicats Sportifs (FNASS) and Others v France. The case concerned the […]
January 19, 2018
This guest post was written by Ingrida Milkaite, Ghent University* On 7 November 2017 the European Court of Human Rights (the ECtHR, the Court) found a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The main issue at hand was the Court’s assessment of whether the right balance between the applicant’s right […]
November 23, 2017
This guest post was written by Ingrida Milkaite (Ghent University)* On 12 October 2017 the European Court of Human Rights (the Court, the ECtHR) decided on the liability of Google Inc. as an information society service provider for offensive comments posted below a blog post about Mr Payam Tamiz. His application filed under article 8 […]
October 19, 2017
By Argyro Chatzinikolaou, (Doctoral Student), Law & Technology, Faculty of Law, Ghent University The recent judgment of the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR in the case of Bărbulescu v Romania found that the monitoring of an employee’s email account resulted in the violation of his right to respect for private life and correspondence within the […]
July 19, 2017
By Ingrida Milkaite, Ghent University The case of Bogomolova v. Russia concerns the use of an unauthorised photograph of a minor’s face on the front page of a booklet promoting adoption and help for orphans. It proves that the publication of pictures of children without parental consent may have a significant social impact on the […]