On June 26, 2015, the Constitutional Court of Georgia received a constitutional claim by the Public Defender for essential hearing. The Public Defender considered disputable the provision of the paragraph 1 of the article 8³of the Law of Georgia “On electronic communications” according to which for the purpose of conduction of covert investigation, government bodies with relevant authority have the right to acquire information in real time from communication lines and to place signal detection equipment and computer programme-provision mechanisms free of charge.

The above-mentioned legislative regulations provide unlimited right to the state to have access to both identification data and content of the communication of participants conducted through telecommunication and internet directly i.e. without mediator. Thus, the state has a kind of freedom of action towards the right to private life that it can easily transform into actions without permission.

Another disputable issue is keeping of communication identification data (place of conducted calls, duration, frequency, date of the communications, etc) by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In the opinion of the Public Defender, in conditions when the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia has practically uncontrolled authority to access communication means it should not be him to conduct keeping of such information.

The Constitutional Court also found permissible the claim of the coalition “This concerns you” on constitutionality of the legislation balancing covert hearing/ wiretapping.