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歐美研究
Surveillance and Democratic Supervision
—
Reflections on Tendencies in Developments in
Europe and the United States
Ching-Yi Liu
Graduate Institute of National Development
College of Social Science, National Taiwan University
No.1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei 10617, Taiwan
E-mail:
cytahr@gmail.comAbstract
Pursuing an inquiry into how a democratic society is supposed to
monitor government surveillance, this essay examines the attitude of
the European Court of Human Rights
(
ECtHR
)
towards litigation de-
rived from laws on surveillance in European nations, and juxtaposes
the findings with relevant disputes in the United States; the purpose of
this inquiry is to explore how these traditions might shed light on the
situation in Taiwan and how the landscape of democratic supervision
is to be shaped under modern surveillance law. This essay argues that
the European judiciary is well-experienced in the realm of informa-
tional privacy, and that reforms to surveillance law in European na-
tions is generally determined by ECtHR case-law. Of particular sig-
nificance is the emphasis that the ECtHR lays on the interpretation
and analysis of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human
Rights
(
ECHR
)
, specifically the focus on the notion “in accordance
with the law” rather than “necessary in a democratic society.” Such
tendency might lead to the fact that the State Parties to the ECHR are
merely willing to introduce domestic legislation. Accordingly, there is
still plenty of room for improvement in the protective framework of
informational privacy essential for a democratic society.
Key Words
:
s
urveillance, informational privacy, European Court of
Human Rights, metadata, big data