News /
Should government monitor the net in Poland? [38]
Merged:
Authoritarian Tusk encourages massive numbers of phone tapsPOLAND is Europe's leader in cell phone surveillance. In 2011, Polish authorities made 1,856,888 requests for information from billing records—who called who when, for how long, etc. That was nearly half a million more than in 2010.
In Poland nine different bodies, from the police to tax inspectors, are allowed to access cell-phone information, and usually on simple presentation of a written request. Normal EU member states regulate this kind of surveillance far more strictly.
Emails are subject to blanket screening by the security services for key words - meaning that the fight against crime and terrorism results in widespread electronic snooping of innocent citizens. The people charged with maintaining a correct balance are the officers concerned. The positive side to this is that phone taps helped recover the "Arbeit macht frei" sign. But someone should be on the side of the citizen.
Poland should be worried. Remember: this is a country where the Communist secret police ran the underground press, where the leading intellectual newspaper has been shackled and may close after government shenanigans. Would the US body politic allow someone to buy the Washington Post for the purposes of closing it down for political reasons?
Anybody interested in freedom of speech should be concerned by the increasingly authoritarian behaviour of Tusk and his coterie.
