Thread by @Jacob_oberg_EU

Media alert: I was interviewed yesterday by @dagensnyheter which is one of the leading Swedish daily newspapers. This is a longer critical article in Swedish on the new Government's proposals for visitation zones and anonymous witnesses. Small 🧵
dn.se/sverige/skarp-…

1) A "visitation zone" means that the police can stop people on the street, on their bicycles or in their cars to check their possessions, search their bags and even a body search, if needed, may be done: yourdanishlife.dk/gang-related-v…

2) The proposal is based on the Danish experience where it is claimed that visitationes zones have been used succesfully to cool gang conflicts.

3) Legally, it is, however, likely to encroach upon Article 8 of the European Convention on the right to privacy. The ECtHR has previously reached this conclusion regarding similar British legislation in Gillan and Quinton v. the United Kingdom.

4) The ECtHR noted in this judgment that even if there were statutory temporal and geographical restrictions on authorisations those did not act as any real check, demonstrated by the fact that the authorisation for the Metropolitan Police District had been continuously renewed.

5) Furthermore, it is not sufficient if judicial review of authorisation is available if the powers conferred to the police is too wide making it almost impossible to challenge an authorisation.

6) In sum, this proposal entails that the right to privacy is set aside within certain geographical areas where the police can select people at random and search them without suspicion of crime which I consider highly questionable from a moral perspective.

7) I also warned that there is a real risk that the police's work would be made more difficult since suspicions of discrimination and arbitrariness could arise. The police itself is also, as seen from the article, uncomforable of applying this legislation.

8) Following the ECtHR case law the authorisation decision must be reviewable in court afterwards, valid only for a limited time and under special conditions including strong reason for the visitation zones and a need for authorisation in advance from the courts.

9) In sum I am very skeptical to this type of #emergencystate (@AdamWagner1) legislation which gives extremely broad powers to the police, where it is difficult to control the exercise of the discretion and where the police itself is uncomfortable of applying the legislation.

10) This article may be interesting for: @fatjudge @MikaelSwahn , @cwjurlu , @Pau_Brandberg, @Ride_fixer , @PiaGripenberg , @EUYlvaNilsson , @oskartaxen , @tygkasse , @MariaStenergard, @KinbergBatra, @LennartStrinaes,@BengtIvarsson, @EngstrT @NCriminology @anneramberg