International coalition to support the Canadian Civil Liberties Association

The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, together with three other human rights organisations – Data Rights France working at the EU level, the Greek organisation Homo Digitalis, and the Spanish (Catalan) organisation Irídia – has intervened in the case of Brejza v. Poland, currently before the European Court of Human Rights. These organisations are connected by the fact that they all operate in countries where the Pegasus spyware has been misused to surveil political opponents, journalists, and human rights defenders. Their intervention aims to present the Court with the serious human rights consequences of spyware abuse and to assist in establishing appropriate legal standards.

The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU, in Hungarian: TASZ) has been addressing data protection (GDPR) -based SLAPP issues for several years. GDPR based SLAPP cases are legal proceedings, where influential individuals try to stifle journalism with the misuse of data protection. We represent numerous affected editorial offices and actively participate in the dialogue on the anti-SLAPP directive at the European level. It is our primary aim to learn as much as possible about this new phenomenon, and to use this knowledge to facilitate meaningful dialogue between the relevant stakeholders.

The Strasbourg court's decision in a case from Hungary declares once and for all that uncontrolled government surveillance is incompatible with European human rights standards.