Guide on Article 8 of the Convention – Right to respect for private and family life
597. In many cases, the question of lawyers’ correspondence has been closely linked to that of searches of their offices (reference is accordingly made to the chapter on Law firms). 598. Lastly, covert surveillance of a detainee’s consultations with his lawyer at a police station must be examined from the standpoint of the principles established by the Court in relation to the interception of telephone communications between a lawyer and a client, in view of the need to afford enhanced protection of this relationship, and in particular of the confidentiality of the exchanges characterising it (R.E. v. the United Kingdom, § 131). 599. As regard persons who had been formally charged and placed under police escort, control of their correspondence with a lawyer is not of itself incompatible with the Convention. However, such control is only permissible when the authorities have reasonable cause to believe that it contains an illicit enclosure (Laurent v. France, §§ 44 and 46).
D. Correspondence of private individuals, professionals and companies74 600. The right to respect for correspondence covers the private, family and professional sphere. It also covers cyberbullying or cyber-surveillance by a person’s intimate partner (Buturugă v. Romania, § 74). 601. In Margareta and Roger Andersson v. Sweden the Court found a violation on account of the restrictions imposed on communications by letter and telephone between a mother and her child who was in the care of social services, depriving them of almost all means of remaining in contact for a period of approximately one and a half years (§§ 95-97). 602. In Copland v. the United Kingdom the Court found a violation on account of the monitoring, without any legal basis, of a civil servant’s telephone calls, email and Internet use (§§ 48-49). In Halford v. the United Kingdom, concerning workplace monitoring by a public employer, the Court found a violation in that no legal instrument regulated the interception of calls made on the telephone of the civil servant concerned (§ 51). 603. Communications from private business premises may be covered by the notion of “correspondence” (Bărbulescu v. Romania [GC], § 74). In this particular case, an employer had accused an employee of using an internet instant messaging service for private conversations on a work computer. The Court held that an employer’s instructions could not reduce private social life in the workplace to zero. The right to respect for private life and for the privacy of correspondence continue to exist, even if these may be restricted in so far as necessary (Bărbulescu v. Romania [GC], § 80). 604. Contracting States have to be granted "a wide margin of appreciation" as regards the legal framework for regulating the conditions in which an employer may regulate electronic or other communications of a non-professional nature by its employees in the workplace. That said, the States’ discretion is not unlimited; there is a positive obligation on the authorities to ensure that the introduction by an employer of measures to monitor correspondence and other communications, irrespective of the extent and duration of such measures, are "accompanied by adequate and sufficient safeguards against abuse". Proportionality and procedural guarantees against arbitrariness are essential in this regard (Bărbulescu v. Romania [GC], §§ 119-120). 605. In this context, the Court has set down a detailed list of factors by which compliance with this positive obligation should be assessed: (i) whether the employee has been notified clearly and in 74
See also the Guide on Data protection.
European Court of Human Rights
130/161
Last update: 31.08.2021
