Surveillance in Poland under scrutiny of court. Step by step changes inspired by civil society organisations

The police and secret services in Poland will disclose to the court the technical means (wiretapping or other) they intend to use in their operational activity targeted at a citizen. Also both approvals and rejections of their motions will have to be justified by the court. 

The introduction of stricter court control of state surveillance comes as a result of the Panoptykon Foundation and its fellow organisation winning a case in the European Court of Human Rights.

99 percent of motions for operational control authorised by Polish courts

In May 2024 the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the judiciary control over surveillance in Poland was ineffective. The court authorising the agencies’ activity had no ground to make a justified decision (be it approval or refusal), for a number of reasons, i.a.:

• incomplete access to information about the case, 
• time pressure to issue a decision
• unbalanced representation of two sides of the case, as there was no one in the decision-making process to protect the privacy of the person being wiretapped (“privacy advocate”).

Last but not least, while a “yes” was just a formality, a “no” required a written justification.

As a result courts used to authorise as much as 99 percent of motions for operational control (incl. wire-tapping). And this violated citizens’ rights and freedoms.

The lack of scrutiny could (and did) lead to courts unknowingly authorising surveillance of journalists or civil society activists. The Pegasus spyware was revealed to be used against politicians from the (then) opposition. Even though the government officials repeatedly commented that “each case of Pegas use usage was authorised by court”, the courts without any doubt were unaware of the means of surveillance the Central Anticorruption Bureau was going to use and the reasons behind this action.

Years of Panoptykon’s Foundation pressure result in new legislation

The new legislation obliges the state surveillance agencies to disclose more information to the courts. The Police, the Internal Security Agency, and other agencies will have to disclose the list of technical means they plan to use in their proceedings. At the same time the court will have to justify both approvals and rejections. This will allow for a critical analysis of the request and put an end to rubber stamping the motions.

The changes come as a result of several years of struggle by the Panoptykon Foundation accompanied by the Helsinki Foundation of Human Rights. The judgment in the case the two organisations took to the ECHR together with the human rights lawyer, Mikołaj Pietrzak, was directly quoted as the reason to introduce the legislation.

In Poland there are 10 state agencies with privilege to use operational-control tools, such as wire-tapping: i.a. counterintelligence, the Police, Border Guard, tax authorities, Military Gendarmerie, and others. They are formally supervised by different departments of the government. For the changes to take effect, all of them had to issue their own legislation.

Draft legislation concerning tax authorities published after a public appeal from CSOs

While the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Internal Affairs introduced the legislation concerning agencies under their supervision (incl. the Police which filed 90 percent of all the motions for surveillance in 2024) in early 2025, two other ministries lagged behind. Eventually, in September 2025 the legislation concerning the Military Gendarmerie was signed by the Minister of National Defense and came into force. Finally, after a public appeal from the Panoptykon Foundation and their fellow CSO, Civic Development Forum, in September 2025, the Minister of Finances published the draft legislation concerning tax authorities.