Thread by @olabini

Yesterday, after 7 (!) months, the first stage of the Habeas Data has finally concluded. In theory, we won - at least against CIES, the central intelligence service of Ecuador. In practice, the situation is a lot more complicated. Let me review in this thread what happened. 1/53

This all started in August 2020, when we submitted several official requests for information to different government agencies. Because of the extreme amounts of illegal surveillance against me, we wanted to find out who ordered it, who was doing it, and all data collected. 2/53

Of course, we don't know exactly which agency are doing it. But since we have seen official cars and also police involved in the surveillance, it seems certain that the government are involved in some way. So we sent requests of information to the most likely agencies. 3/53

Specifically, what we asked for was all information the agencies had about me, including orders, reports, photographs, videos, recordings and so on. And if they didn't have any information, that they return a certified response saying so. 4/53

Because the illegal surveillance is such a clear human rights violation, government agencies _must_ respond to this request for information according to Ecuadorean and international law. And of course, we have plenty of evidence showing the surveillance as well. 5/53

We sent this first request for information to the Ministry of Government, the Central Intelligence Service of the State (CIES), The General Intelligence Directorate of the Police (DGI) and several other police institutions, including at the national and Quito level. 6/53

Now, after a few weeks we got an answer from CIES, but no other agency responded. The response from CIES basically said that they do a lot of secret and reserved things, and they can't really respond to the question. As I mentioned above, that's not legal in this case. 7/53

So, in October 2020 we filed a Habeas Data against these agencies for not responding or not responding properly. The Habeas Data is a constitutional remedy, and we used the "informative" version. The goal of it is simply to get access to information. 8/53

The Ministry of Government later claimed that they never received our request. We had a confirmation that they did receive it, but in October, for some reason it had disappeared from everywhere in a very suspicious way. 9/53

But funnily enough, the Ministry of Government did respond to the request, asking for clarifications. This happened before we filed the Habeas Data... So how could the ministry respond to a request that they never received? 10/53

The police responded inside of the Habeas Data process, to the judge instead of to us. They responded, saying that they have absolutely no information about me. They then added some appendices that says clearly that the police is surveilling me and tapping my phone. 11/53

Of course, if surveillance and tapping is happening, there _has_ to be orders. There _has_ to be reports of some kind. So how come the police claims nothing exists? 12/53

From October, when we filed the Habeas Data, there has been a number of suspensions and delays. Each time the excuses have been more ridiculous than last time. But finally, yesterday, we had the conclusion, where everyone gave their closing arguments, and we got a decision. 13/53

Before talking about it, I should mention that we submitted a lot of supporting evidence to the Habeas Data process. This was in the form of testimony by me and a friend who has experienced the surveillance. It included a report from my security team, and some other things. 14/53

However, the reason we submitted this evidence was NOT because it's necessary for the Habeas Data itself. The failure to respond properly by the agencies would be enough. But this evidence was submitted to support our original reasons for requesting the information. 15/53

So, let's talk about yesterdays hearing. The basic idea was to hear closing arguments from all parties, and then hear the resolution from the judge. We actually went through two rounds of argumentation, and then a final answer. Then, after 2.5 hours, we got a resolution. 16/53

The whole day started with the lawyer from CIES not showing up. The judge repeatedly said he didn't want to sanction anyone. My lawyer called CIES and got hold of their legal department, telling them that they had a hearing, and everyone was waiting for them... 17/53

After the lawyer from CIES showed up, we heard the arguments from each side. All the police agencies were represented by the same lawyer, and we also heard arguments from Procuraduría, which apparently always represents the government in these kinds of actions. 18/53

I'll cover some of the more interesting statements from the arguments in this thread, but I won't cover everything they said. This will also be in no particular order. A lot of weird things were said. Based on the above explanations, you will see the absurdity. 19/53

The main argument from the Ministry of Government was basically that no request had come in, so we had no standing to actually have a Habeas Data in the first case. This ignored completely that the ministry answered to the request they claim they didn't receive. 20/53

The ministry also says that they don't do surviellance, so it's invalid to ask them about that kind of information. Apparently they claim that they don't have any reports or order or information gained from surveillance in any way - something that is quite strange. 21/53

Just for reference, the Ministry of Government used to be the Interior Ministry, and just like this ministry in most other countries, they are responsible for the interior, including all police forces and other intelligence services. 22/53

That means that even though the ministry might not do any surveillance on their own, they certainly order and control it. In fact, they are likely the main entity in the Ecuador government that controls surveillance of any kind. So this legal argument feels pretty bogus. 23/53

Of course, it would have been easy for the ministry to just give us a certified response saying "No, we have no information about that person". But instead, they decided to fight, using this kind of weird legal argument. 24/53

The lawyer from CIES went ahead trying to discredit and attack evidence and witnesses. He quoted from our testimony but simply quoted it wrong, to fit his narrative... 25/53

In fact, CIES claimed that I could have been the source of the surveillance photos taken of myself! CIES also claims that no human rights have been violated. He even said that if you can't prove it, human rights can't be violated. 26/53

To me, this is an extremely dangerous perspective for an intelligence agency to have. Basically, as long as they hide the violations well enough, there can be no accountability for human rights violations, because they can't have happened! 27/53

In the same way, the CIES lawyer also said that unless you can prove that CIES specifically was spying on you, they have no legal responsibility at all. Which means that they once again would be free to do almost whatever they want, without oversight or accountability. 28/53

Finally, the CIES lawyer claimed that their response actually said something different from what it said. He quoted parts of it out of context, making it sound like they had responded to the request, when the full letter clearly claimed secrecy as a reason to not comply. 29/53

As mentioned above, what we asked for, in the case no information existed matching our request, was a certified response from the highest authority in the organization saying this, but CIES did not supply that kind of response at all. 30/53

The lawyer for the different police agencies claimed in his oral statement that they had no information about me at all. Then he continued talking about the information they did have. Just as with the letter, the lawyer actively contradicted himself. 31/53

Another trick from the lawyer for the police was to quote only parts of our request, making it sound as if we were only asking for videos and photos, and then saying the police has no such thing. Of course, our request asked for reports, orders and other things too. 32/53

And of course, since they have already admitted in one document that surveillance was happening, videos and photos must exist. The lawyer was clearly lying in this case. 33/53

On top of all this, the claimed that my friends testimony is not valid since it came from a friend of me. Apparently friends can't be witnesses... 34/53

The lawyer from the police ended his statement by saying that the fact that we have seen police following us and surveilling and harassing me is nothing strange - it's just a sign that the police is doing a great job, doing what they are supposed to do! 35/53

Finally, the lawyer from the Procuraduría was completely confused. She kept talking about how we hadn't proven a "nexus causal". In Ecuador law, this concept talks about the connection between the different aspects of a crime. But this concept is not valid in a Habeas Data. 36/53

It makes absolutely no sense to talk about it in the context of a constitutional remedy. She spent most of her time talking about it from this perspective, and also attacking the evidence, even though the evidence wasn't really central to the question of the hearing. 37/53

The Procuraduría also claimed that you can't use a precedent from other legal cases unless the context and circumstances are exactly the same. In this hearing, the implication was that I had to be disappeared or murdered before I could do a Habeas Data. 38/53

The whole idea of evidence confused the lawyers a lot - and they tried to confuse the judge too. The lawyers kept saying we had not proven the facts, so we couldn't do the Habeas Data. But if we _had_ proven the facts, we wouldn't _need_ the Habeas Data. 39/53

This confusion is really central to the case. We did the Habeas Data because we need to get information about who is behind these acts of illegal surveillance. And that is exactly what Habeas Data Informativo is designed for. 40/53

And once we have the answers, we could go ahead and use them in criminal or other constitutional processes where we _would_ need to prove these things. But for now, we did the Habeas Data for the simple reason that the agencies didn't answer our requests. 41/53

The Procuraduría continued by saying that I haven't been surveilled at all, and that the evidence we submitted isn't proven, so it can't be used. 42/53

Overall, the lawyers from the government came with a lot of quite problematic arguments. A lot of it was weird attacks on evidence. There were certainly a large amount of pure lies. But the arguments from CIES bothered me a lot. 43/53

Basically, the lawyer from CIES sounded like they wanted to be completely unaccountable and without oversight - and if no judge challenges these perspectives, they might actually be. From this hearing, it seems CIES is above the law, at least in some respects. 44/53

When the judge finally was scheduled to come back with a resolution, something strange happened. A lot of our observers were not being let in to the Zoom room to observe the end of the hearing. We complained a lot to the judge and the secretary to try to get it fixed. 45/53

And after we made a lot of noise about it, finally the rest of the observers were allowed to enter. We don't know what happened here, but it smelled quite a lot like an attempt at censoring the end of the hearing. Maybe they realized that the resolution was legally flawed? 46/53

As I mentioned in the beginning, the judge ruled that the answer from CIES was not sufficient to answer our requests. He will order them to respond in a better way. But CIES has already announced that they are appealing the decision. 47/53

When it comes to the Ministry of Government, the judge accepted the story that we never sent in the request before the Habeas Data, even though the evidence clearly shows the opposite. He also accepted that the answer the ministry finally gave was adequate. 48/53

In the case of the police, just as with the ministry, the judge said that their response was sufficient as well - completely ignoring the lies and contradictions manifested by the lawyer for the police. 49/53

It's clear that the judge in this case had no interest in justice or a fair trial. All the lies and contradictions by the government were completely ignored and accepted by the judge. Fundamentally, the government avoided accountability for a large amount of wrongdoing. 50/53

Even though CIES will be ordered to send a proper response as a result of the resolution, I fear that they will simply send a slightly differently worded letter, not letting us get to the bottom of the questions we have. 51/53

So, as I said in the beginning of this thread, on the surface this might look like a victory, but in truth, we saw more of the same corruption, injustice and violations, just in a different format. 52/53

Within one hour of the hearing ending we had already seen two different surveillance cars from the DGI, following us. That's how much the government cares about human rights. 53/53