Legislative Council Recommends Tightening up Rules for Phone Tapping

Prepared by the Ministry of Justice, the draft envisages that people whose phone conversations were unjustifiably bugged would later be told about this by the Police, and could eventually claim compensation.

The new law is also expected to lay down expressly the principle that telephone tapping may only be ordered in cases when the Police cannot obtain the necessary information and evidence by any other way.

People whose telephone conversations would be bugged could then apply to the Supreme Court with a motion to review the legality of such a step. “A citizen whose rights have been thus violated will be able to claim compensation from the State.“

The Government should, according to its legislators, also approve a law on the so-called detention institutions for dangerous criminals who have no criminal liability due to their insanity but for whom psychiatric treatment is inadequate. Experts say that such an institute, as a transitional facility between a mental hospital and a detention centre, is still missing in the Czech Republic. The pertinent bill envisages that such detention facilities would be administered by the Prison Service, which is expected to reduce the possibility of dangerous criminals escaping to a minimum.

Interior Minister Ivan Langer has also submitted to the Legislative Council changes of laws aimed at paving the way for problem-free functioning of registered partnership of people of the same sex. Its ultimate purpose is to ensure unified exercise of state administration and better conditions for processing data on registered partnership, for instance in the identity cards register or in the population register.

At their meeting today, the members of the Legislative Council and representatives of the Interior Ministry agreed that the Ministry would withdraw its proposal and submit instead two independent laws changing the interrelated regulations.

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