Constitutional Oversight of Government Surveillance in the United States

The aim of the article is the analysis of constitutional oversightof the government surveillance in the United States. Referring to Snowden affair and COVID-19 surveillance, the Author discusses the challenges faced by the legislative and judicial branches in pursuing control over the executive’s national security policies. Focusing on the rule of secrecy and other constitutional doctrines and privileges, he tries to explain why effective control of government surveillance is today impossible.

The importance of surveillance carried out by state authorities - especially in connection with the increasing threat of terrorism - is not disputable. State authorities, inciting the need to ensure the security of the state and citizens, often take measures to limit human rights, including, above all, the right to privacy. This paper aims to present the most important judgments delivered by the European Court of Human Rights based on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (sanctioning the right to respect for private life) regarding surveillance and the position of the Court in this matter. Of course, the article also presents the position on the surveillance of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal.

The paper is an attempt to diagnose the visible phenomenon, though still informal, of forced privatization of tasks assigned to law enforcement authorities within the current Polish legal system of counteracting money laundering and financing terrorism. It is also an attempt to assess the situation when law enforcement and supervisory institutions as well as cooperating bodies marginalize their duties connected to preventive and investigative activities. The author advances the thesis that shifting the point of gravity of the indicated actions to the obligated entities (mainly of a non-public character) leads to an unacceptable, from the point of view of constitutional principles, threat to freedoms and rights and constitutes an obligation that does not fit into the conditions specified in art. 31 of the Constitution. The article is a picture of reality.

Father Jerzy Popiełuszko in denouncing reports by secret collaborators of the Security Service

Despite the large number of publications about the figure and activities of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, there is a shortage of reliable academic studies analysing the documentation concerning the priest produced by the communist apparatus of repression. The aim of the present text is to present the reports of secret collaborators focused on Father Popieluszko and an extensive historical analysis of their activities. For the purposes of this text, the work files and personal files of three secret collaborators with pseudonyms were analysed: „Jankowski”, „Kustosz”, „Tarcza/Miecz”. The personalities of these persons and the file references were previously known and mentioned, mainly by journalists, but no solid scholarly work, apart from the files of tw „Jankowski”, has been done so far. The records of tw „Janusz” and the steelworkers „Bogdan”, „Uczciwy” and „Fredek”, which have not been mentioned so far, were also discussed. The basic sources for investigating this issue are the materials produced by the Ministry of the Internal Affairs, above all personal files, work folders and records from card files.

The question of adequacy of data protection model in the United States is one of the most important in transatlantic business and politic relations. The fact that European Commission’s decisions recognizing the adequacy have been annulled twice put relations between EU and US in very difficult phase. In this article I aim to analyse whether basis guarantees for privacy protection in the United States in the shape of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution are adequate in the meaning of data protection model in EU. By looking at the practice of interpreting of the Fourth Amendment and art. 8 of European Convention of Human Rights, in line with police directive and GDPR I try to answer the questions if the Fourth Amendment protection gives enough guarantees to ensure respect towards privacy and data protection rights of individuals.