Court: Bulgaria’s surveillance laws breach rights convention

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Bulgaria’s laws on secret surveillance breach the European human rights convention. The Strasbourg-based court was asked to evaluate Bulgaria’s 1997 surveillance law as well as the country’s criminal code. The court said Tuesday that the law “governing secret surveillance did not meet the quality-of-law requirement” in the European Convention on Human Rights. It said the Bulgarian government “was unable to keep surveillance to only that which was necessary.” The case was brought by Bulgarian lawyers and rights groups. Last year, a parliamentary panel found that more than 900 Bulgarians — journalists, politicians and rights activists — had been wiretapped during the anti-corruption protests that brought down the government.