Preventiva hemliga tvångsmedel och integritetsskyddet : Preventivlagen i ljuset av regeringsformen och Europakonventionen

Sammanfattning: In recent years Sweden has been affected by an increase in organized crime, bombings, and deadly gun violence. Government surveillance measures for the purpose of preventing crime, i.e., before a concrete criminal suspicion arises, have thus become a more common practice within the work of law enforcement authorities. The act (2007:979) on measures to prevent certain particularly serious crimes(hereinafter referred to as“Preventivlagen”)is of particular importance for this preventive kind of secret surveillance measures. The purpose of this research paper is to investigate whether Preventivlagen contains adequate protection and safeguards for the freedoms and rights of individuals' privacy according to the Swedish Instrument of Government (1974:152) (hereinafter referred to as“Regeringsformen”) and the European Convention on human rights, Article 8 the right to privacy and Article 13 the right to effective legal remedies. A further aim was to examine if the law in question needs to be improved with respect to privacy protection. In addition, the new bill in SOU 2022:52 which proposes to expand Preventivlagen, was also reviewed in terms of privacy protection. In conclusion, Preventivlagen generally is foreseeable in terms of the scope of application for the use of secret surveillance measures. Furthermore, it also mostly contains adequate safeguards. However, there are certain parts that can be improved. When a proportionality assessment was made according to the requirements of the European Convention and Regeringsformen, it was concluded that Preventivlagen partly lacks some basic safeguards regarding individuals' right to notification and effective legal remedies. Also, the supervision exercised by the Privacy Protection Board was deemed insufficient. Therefore, Preventivlagen may constitute a disproportionate intervention in the individual's right to privacy in Article 8 and the right to effective legal remedies in Article 13, as well as ch. 2. § 6 Regeringsformenwhich also protects the right to privacy. It was therefore proposed that the shortcomings of the law be addressed by the legislature. The new draft bill SOU 2022:52 was also described and analyzed. In the bill, it is proposed that the catalog of crimes in Preventivlagen be expanded and that the use of excess information becomes unlimited. The conclusion in this part was that an expansion of the crime catalog and the possibility of unlimited use of excess information can have an impact on the proportionality and foreseeability aspect of the law. It was therefore proposed that the legislator strengthen the safeguards in Preventivlagen to further ensure privacy protection if these changes are introduced.