Summary

In 2015, the prison service – prisons and the prisons department of the Ministry of Justice – was issued 16 authorisations for surveillance activities. Authorisations were granted for activities set forth in §126⁷ (wire-tapping or covert observation of information), §126⁶ (covert examination of postal items) and §126⁵ (covert surveillance, covert collection of comparative samples and conduct of initial examinations, covert examination and replacement of things) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP). In 2014, the prison service was authorised to conduct surveillance activities on nine occasions, all under CCP’s §126⁷.

The article gives an overview of the regulation of surveillance activities in prison and explains the differences in defining a surveillance activity due to the nature of imprisonment. Namely, the key feature of a surveillance activity is its covertness: surveillance activities denote the processing of personal data for the performance of a duty provided by law with the objective of hiding the fact and content of data processing from the data subject (CCP’s §126¹ (1)). Provided that the other conditions requisite for applying for an authorisation for surveillance activities set forth in the CCP have been met, then the question remains whether it even is a surveillance activity, i.e., whether the activities of officers in processing data are actually hidden from the data subject. The need to analyse covertness or the lack of it and to compare the result with the nature of a surveillance activity may arise especially in connection with activities that are conducted to ensure the general security of the prison and to supervise the prisoners.