On 27 September the hearing was held at the European Court of Human Rights, following the application against Poland lodged by activists from Poland’s Panoptykon Foundation and Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, joined by a human rights attorney. The group alleges that the state violated their right to privacy by allowing the intelligence agencies to act beyond scrutiny. Their case has been supported by the United Nations special rapporteur, Polish Ombudsman and the European Criminal Bar Association, attending the Strasbourg hearing as well.

The Senate of Poland concluded its investigation on the use of Pegasus by Polish secret services to spy on ia. opposition politicians and unapologetic public persons. They declared that Pegasus should be considered illegal in Poland and the secret services should be put under strict and independent scrutiny. Doubts also arose around the fairness of Poland's 2019 elections.

Access of the law enforcement agencies and secret services upon more or less formal warrants and request do not cover the whole problem of the online surveillance. More and more date is available out there without any warrants – just to read, take and process. It is the situation, when the data that we all publish online, with more or less awareness of the consequences, is used by authorities mention above for whatever purposes. How purpose limitation could possibly be used to limit open source surveillance? To what extent privacy settings that by default enable or enhance making data public help in conducting this type of surveillance? How open source surveillance might influence individual?

The story of post-Snowden debate is a story of crossing the redlines that never should be crossed in democratic society. After at least 10 years of allegations, we gained evidence showing that surveillance is not about fighting terrorism or even public security. It is about intelligence agencies best interests and easy access to citizens data. Katarzyna Szymielewicz talks about these sad truths nearly 12 months after first disclosures made by Edward Snowden.

Just after Snowden revelations about NSA’s programs of bulk, mass surveillance there was hope for political change. Politics gave many promises regarding that issue. We were talking about freezing TFTP agreement till United States explains NSA activities, serious investigation in Brussels to find out what really those programs were about and how it affected fundamental rights of European citizens. We were talking about quickly negotiating new umbrella agreement on exchange of data connected to judicial matters and police cooperation. We were talking about revision of existing agreements on exchange of personal data, like SWIFT and PNR. But now are hearing that we need to rebuild trust, because of trade relations between EU and USA and economic crisis.