Under surveillance

As the new Criminal Procedure Code has come into force, people are taking a closer look at the “devils” that lurk in its clauses. One of the most important things is permission for the law-enforcement bodies to place individuals under secret surveillance. From now on, surveillance, penetration into a home, collection of evidence, and other investigatory actions will be carried out under a veil of secrecy – legitimate secrecy at that.

Ukraine’s main law-enforcement authorities, including the Security Service, the Ministry of the Interior, the Tax Service, the Border Security Service, and the Prosecution, have drawn up a regulation on the procedure of investigative actions against individuals. It is now allowed to conduct surveillance in public places without the knowledge of those present. It is also legitimate for operatives to secretly penetrate into a home, retrieve data from personal computers, and take biological samples. The data gathered in the course of such actions will be confidential information.

What is more, these actions can be taken with respect to not only the suspect but also another person “if it is possible, as a result of these actions, to gather information about the crime and the person who has committed it.” According to Party of Regions MP Volodymyr Oliinyk, one of the authors of this code, the circle of individuals subject to this kind of actions is in fact unlimited. As a matter of fact, whatever the case is, the police can crack down on all your relatives, friends, colleagues, and classmates. Therefore, even if illegal investigative actions against the grandmother of a suspect’s relative produce no results, all the materials that the law enforcers have gathered will still be taken into account and placed on record. And, as is known, nothing gets lost in this kind of organizations unless some of those who work there would like some information to disappear.

With due account of the well-known “six handshakes theory,” which says that any two persons on the planet are at least six handshakes away from each other, the chain of such investigative actions can potentially embrace the entire Ukraine in a very short time. Naturally, the amount of the information to be processed will be so large that the competent bodies may just boggle down in it. After all, by contrast with Belarus, total surveillance and fingerprinting is hardly possible in Ukraine. But the target audiences, such as social activists, students who are active citizens even to a minimal extent, culture figures, and journalists, will be under a watchful “eye.” One can argue that they may have been under this eye for a long time now, even without any legal provisions. The answer to this is: formerly, law enforcers had no formal reasons why they should display professional zeal and open a file on all those who refused to lie low all the time. But now there is an official go-ahead on collecting any information about any event.

The wording of the unofficial investigative actions clause is, of course, quite right. These actions can be taken if it is a question of “saving the life of people or preventing a major crime.” But, for some reason, “hatching terrorist plots against government members, calling for overthrowing the current system,” and other similar phrases come to mind. For it is clearly not against a rural drunkard, who regularly chases, axe in hand, his wife and children, that “hidden audio- and video monitoring; perusal, seizure or impoundment of correspondence” are to be resorted to. Nor is it a drug addict, who intends to murder a neighboring old woman to get money for a dose, whose “phone calls, SMS, MMS, and emailing” will be monitored. Nor is it a hardcore repeat offender who will have his computer data retrieved. The intention is clearly to deal with some other groups of potential suspects. You just try to fall from their graces! Controlling our letters, even the most innocent ones, can say very much to the law enforcers. And if they also secretly obtain “samples of raw or ready-made materials in publicly inaccessible places for a comparative analysis,” they will also know about our health and that of our relatives. And nobody will be able to deny them this on the basis of patient confidentiality. For everything will be done secretly.

Naturally, our new Criminal Procedure Code also legitimizes secret penetration into the living quarters. It is not a search but a secret penetration, the abovementioned Oliinyk explains. But what does his explanation have to do with us? Those who secretly penetrate into our home can plant anything there. Then, during an official search, the same police officers will find drugs, weapons, leaflets, and money, as well as calls for overthrowing the government plus child porn in the computer. Now each of us is totally defenseless against any arbitrary-minded law enforcer. They are assuming unlimited power in this country, for secrecy is the guarantee of fear and a friend of lawlessness. Ukraine, where any law turns into an uncontrollable instrument of the people who are supposed to observe and defend it, is showing the clear outlines of a police state which our northern neighbors – Belarusians and Russians – have already built successfully.

What sounds especially “sweet” against the backdrop of all these prospects is the regulation’s provision on human rights observation. Yes, our law enforcers are mindful of it! And Oliinyk’s comment on the unofficial investigative actions regulation is astonishing: “Individuals can lodge a judicial complaint against secret investigative actions if they have inflicted any damage on them.” Yes, they can and will if they guess that they had some information retrieved. But even if they do, how can they prove that this retrieval has inflicted damage on them and was not just filed until better times? Or will they just manage to open their mouth before the police twist their arms after finding a small packet with white powder that was planted during a secret penetration?

All we can say is that the unofficial investigative actions regulation runs counter to the Constitution which allows penetration into a home only in the presence of witnesses and by a search warrant. The very fact of unofficial investigative actions infringes the basic principles of personal protection, the right to privacy, the secrecy of correspondence, and inviolability of the home. But the new Criminal Procedure Code legitimizes the building of a police state – much to the delight of our ruling elite. This means that, drifting towards the Customs Union, Ukraine legitimizes itself in a zone of lawlessness and systematic and gross human rights violations, which is the case in most post-Soviet countries, especially the ones that are part of the Moscow-centered Eurasian project with its “special values.” What these values are can be seen on the example of just one Ukrainian regulation.