4 ms·
Erosion of rights, eh? My country, Sweden, doesn't have a constitutional court; possibly because of some strange belief that our politicians can't make bad laws
by rhblake 10y ago
Erosion of rights, eh? My country, Sweden, doesn't have a constitutional court; possibly because of some strange belief that our politicians can't make bad laws. (The Swedish supreme court cannot strike down laws, only interpret them.) The European Court of Justice is essentially the only thing that's stopping the Swedish government from extending mass surveillance even further.
E.g., in 2014 the court ruled that mass data retention was violating basic human rights, killing the data retention directive. The Swedish government wanted to keep doing this anyway so they interpreted the ruling quite creatively, concluding that the Swedish implementation of the directive wasn't "bad enough", and forced ISPs/telcos to continue with mass data retention. This was challenged by a Swedish telco and right before Christmas the ECJ ruled in the telco's favor -- and then finally Swedish ISPs could (well, had to!) stop this particular form of surveillance.
So, I'm happy to be in the EU, for that reason and many other reasons.