Shimovolos v. Russia, No. 30194/09, ECtHR (First Section), 21 June 2011

Short-term detention of a human rights activist based on suspicion that he might participate in extremist activities. Registration of the applicant in a surveillance database: collection and storage of personal data about his movements.

Art. 5 ECHR 
Art. 8 ECHR

1. Article 5 par. 1 (c) ECHR does not permit a policy of general prevention directed against an individual or a category of individuals who are perceived by the authorities, rightly or wrongly, as being dangerous or having a propensity to unlawful acts. It does no more than afford the Contracting States a means of preventing a concrete and specific offence (case in which the applicant was checked, questioned and escorted to the police station for the generic purpose of preventing him from committing “offences of an extremist nature”, just because his name was registered in the surveillance database of “potential extremists” due to his involvement as human rights activist). 
2. The systematic collection and storing of data by security services on particular individuals constituted an interference with these persons’ private lives pursuant to art. 8 ECHR, even if that data was collected in a public place or concerned exclusively the person’s professional or public activities. In the special context of secret measures of surveillance, the requirements established in art. 8 par. 2 ECHR cannot mean that an individual should be able to foresee when the authorities are likely to resort to secret surveillance so that he can adapt his conduct accordingly. However, especially where a power vested in the executive is exercised in secret, the risks of arbitrariness are evident. It is therefore essential to have clear, detailed rules on the application of secret measures of surveillance, especially as the technology available for use is continually becoming more sophisticated. The law must be sufficiently clear in its terms to give citizens an adequate indication of the conditions and circumstances in which the authorities are empowered to resort to any measures of secret surveillance and collection of data. In addition, because of the lack of public scrutiny and the risk of abuse intrinsic to any system of secret surveillance, the following minimum safeguards should be set out in statute law to avoid abuses: the nature, scope and duration of the possible measures, the grounds required for ordering them, the authorities competent to permit, carry out and supervise them, and the kind of remedy provided by the national law (case in which the Strasbourg Court considered that the creation and maintenance of the surveillance database and the procedures for its operation were not respectful of the applicant’s right to privacy, since the domestic law doesn’t indicate with sufficient clarity the scope and manner of exercise of the discretion conferred on the domestic authorities to collect and store the information on persons’ private lives).

In the grounds for the judgment, the Strasbourg Court highlighted that the applicant was stopped, checked, questioned and escorted to the police station in connection with a summit between Russia and European Union, while he was travelling for going to a protest march.