State surveillance in Hungary

Résumé du document

As a general principle, all relevant evidence in a case should be available for inspection by all concerned parties. However, the public interest may dictate that certain evidence is withheld, and thus frustrate the interests of justice. We need to critically evaluate the mechanisms which exist to ensure that public interest does not compromise the fairness of legal proceedings. In this paper, I am going to answer the research question on State Surveillance and the relevant Hungarian regulations and institutions in this context. As there is no institution in Hungary like the public interest immunity, I present the regulation on covert data gathering and the usage of this information as evidence in the trial.

Extraits

[...] Act XXXI of 1989 on the Constitution of the Republic of Hungary 2. Act XIX of 1998 on Criminal Proceedings 3. 226/2003. (XII. 13.) Governmental regulation on the management of data on specific conditions of electronic communications services, data security, called ID display and on call forwarding rules EU Law 1. Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 2002 concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (OJ 2002 L 201 pp. [...]

[...] 13.) Ministerial Regulation, Act XIX of 2004 on Tariffs and Finance and 180/2004. (V. 26.) Ministerial Regulation on the cooperation between organizations authorized for electronic communications responsibilities, gathering secret information and confidential data acquisition. These acts and ministerial regulations give authorization for secret intelligence gathering and also specify the regulations of the subject. The purpose of the European Parliament and the Council was, when adopting Directive 2006/24/EC on data retention the harmonization of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks with respect to the retention of certain data which are generated or processed by them. [...]

[...] The Act on Criminal Proceedings sees this special report after attaching it to the files of the investigation as a document and it may be used from then on as evidence in accordance with the rules pertaining to documents. This document is completed with the document of the prosecutor's proposal and the document of the judicial permit when the prosecutor intends to use it as an evidence on the trial. This triple file means the documentarization of the secret intelligence i.e. [...]

[...] Some modifications were sufficient. Namely Act CLXXIV of 2007 on the modification of Act C of 2003 on Electronic Communications, and two Ministerial Regulations: 38/2008 (II.23.) on the modification of 180/2004. (V. 26.) Ministerial Regulation on the cooperation between organizations authorized for electronic communications responsibilities, gathering secret information and confidential data acquisition and 300/2007 (XI.9.) on the modification of the Statistical Data Collection Program for the year Data Protection Authorities Since protection of personal data is a recognized fundamental right in the European Union there are Data Protection Authorities that ensure that these rights are respected in the Member States of the EU. [...]

[...] Publicity can provide a general external supervision, thereby strengthens the democratic character of the judiciary. Publicity both serves a powerful public interest and an important private interest. However there are concerns from the public because the immorality of the crime committed could be harmful to public morality. The publicity of the trial is regulated in Section 237 of Act XIX of 1998 on Criminal Procedure, which states that the trial of the court shall be public but in certain cases the judge may exclude the public from the entirety or a part of the trial in a decision explaining the reasons therefore (moral reasons, to protect minors, persons or the witness participating in the procedure, or to protect state or official secrets). [...]