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The Constitutional Tribunal: the law on billings and phone-tapping are not compliant with the Constitution
The full Tribunal agreed only partly with allegations of the Polish Ombudsman, Irena Lipowicz, and the Prosecutor General, Andrzej Seremet, who questioned the current legal regulations. In order to prevent a loophole in the legal system and to prevent any reduction in Poland’s ability to combat crimes, the judgment will become final in 18 months.
According to the decision of the Constitutional Tribunal, the Act on Internal Security Agency, the Act on Central Anti-Corruption Bureau, and the Act on Military Counterintelligence Service do not provide necessary regulations imposing duties to destroy the data obtained by those secret services. Such data should be destroyed because they cannot be used as evidence in criminal proceedings when they contain information obtained from persons bound by professional secrecy, including advocates. The Constitutional Tribunal pointed out that nowadays even the Custom Service keeps wiretaps of individuals, even though this service is not allowed to use such information in criminal proceedings.
Two out of four judges – Wojciech Hermeliński (former advocate) and Marek Zubik – presented dissenting opinions. According to judge Wojciech Hermeliński, the obligation to destroy wiretaps obtained from advocates, even if they were obtained accidentally, does not efficiently protect the advocates’ professional legal privilege. It is crucial to create mechanisms preventing access to these kinds of materials.
Adv. Mikołaj Pietrzak, in his interview for Gazeta Wyborcza, pointed out that the ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal, emphasizing the importance of legal professional secrecy and the duty to destroy all materials that might be gathered as a result of operational control, is significant both for advocates and for their clients.
In Adv. Mikołaj Pietrzak's opinion, in order to execute the Tribunals’ judgment, instead of implementing separate regulations in every act regulating the functioning of the secret service, only one Act on operation activities should be passed.