SPECIAL COLLECTION OF THE CASE LAW ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION newspaper Diario Extra filed a complaint that two investigative agencies obtained the phone records of a journalist at the newspaper in order to identify the person who was leaking confidential information to the journalist about criminal investigations. According to the Court, monitoring journalists’ calls in the context of a criminal investigation against a third party not only violates the journalist’s right to privacy, but also the right to confidentiality of sources, which is an essential condition for exercising the right to freedom of expression and information. For the phone records of a journalist to be legitimately monitored, the journalist must be under criminal investigation for committing a crime, and the monitoring warrant must be strictly proportionate to the objective pursued. The Court explained that for journalists, confidentiality of sources has a much broader scope of protection than other professions because such protection is essential for society to be properly informed and for journalists to properly fulfill their role. The Court ordered the elimination of all monitoring of incoming and outgoing phone calls made by or connected to the reporter, thus protecting the rights to privacy and the confidentiality of sources. More info here. Russia: In the case of Telegram v. Federal Security Services (2019), the Appellate Collegiate Body of the Supreme Court of Russia found that the Federal Security Services of Russia (FSS) had a lawful right to request that Telegram, a popular online messaging application, share with the FSS the keys needed to decrypt messages sent over its service. On April 14, 2017, the FSS sent a letter to Telegram’s offices in London asking the company to provide it with keys to decrypt messages sent from six mobile numbers. Telegram received the letter but never shared the decryption keys. The FSS initiated a legal action against Telegram alleging that, by failing to satisfy the request, the company had violated the Federal Law “On Information, Information Technologies, and Protection of Information”. The first instance court fined Telegram RUB 800,000 (around $13,000) for failing to comply with the FSS’s requests. Telegram appealed to the appellate court, and the Supreme Court of Russia, arguing that the Russian courts had no jurisdiction to determine such a case against a UK-based entity, and that the request was unlawful since it was not made pursuant to a judicial order. Both upheld the law allowing the FSS to request that Telegram share the decryption keys. Telegram then appealed to the Appellate Collegiate Body of the Supreme Court of Russia, which, among other things, reasoned that the rights to privacy and secrecy in correspondence did not extend to the keys and, therefore, the FSS did not require a judicial order before it could request their disclosure. This ruling illustrates the perils of the absence of independence of the judicial power. In this case, Russia’s Supreme Court undermined the right to freedom of expression and privacy by upholding that a law enabled government authorities to request decryption keys from secure messaging mobile applications to access otherwise encrypted messages, without judicial oversight. This decision represents a direct attack against international human rights laws. More info here. ix. Surveillance of foreign telecommunications Germany: In the case of Reporters sans frontières and Others (2020), the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany held that, under Article 1(3) of the Basic law, Grundgesetz – GG, German state authority is bound by the fundamental rights of the German constitution 18