Surveillance Powers of Law Enforcement and Intelligence Services in Poland

Abstract

The article presents three cases from 2018. They show that in Poland there is a tendency to build strengthened surveillance powers without finding a balance between security and respect for human rights. In the first case, the Commissioner for Human Rights withdrew his application from the Constitutional Tribunal (March 2018), in which he questioned the reforms introduced in 2016. According to the Polish Ombudsman, in the Polish legal system there is still a shortage of the legal safeguards which would make sure that surveillance measures do not violate fundamental rights. In the second case, the Prosecutor General submitted one application to the Constitutional Tribunal concerning the constitutionality of obtaining of evidence of the committing of another offence different from the one covered by operational surveillance. The third case concerns two new institutions which emerged in 2018, which were granted considerable powers in terms of surveillance: the National Security Services and the Internal Supervision Bureau, which is subject to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The circumstances surrounding the emergence of these institutions will also be analyzed.