---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 12:39:51 +0100 From: Jose M Guardia <josegat_private> To: "declanat_private" <declanat_private> Subject: SPANISH COPS NEED A COURT ORDER TO SEARCH A HOTEL ROOM Declan, Don't know how's the legislation about this in the US, but as for Spain, there's some good news for privacy: Spain's Constitutional Court (the highest jurisdictional organ in the country) has ruled that hotel rooms have the same privacy protection than private residences and, therefore, a court order is needed for a search (absent permission from the user, obviously). With the ruling, the court deems as unconstitutional, and therefore overthrows, previous legislation stating that rooms in hotels and similar premises were exempt from the inviolability protection of private homes. In the court's opinion, if private homes are premises where a person "lives without being necessarily subject to social conventions, and has the most intimate liberty" (no, not necessarily because they had seen where I live), it should also be true of hotel rooms, and therefore they should have identical protection against illegal searches. In the 1994 case involved, four police officers searched two rooms rented by two journalists in a Seville hotel without a court order, and the journalists sued for illegal search. The question now is whether the 4 policemen will be punished for an illegal search done in a moment when the legislation making hotel rooms an exception of the inviolability principle was still valid. More coverage (in Spanish): El Constitucional prohíbe los registros en hoteles sin orden judicial http://www.elpais.es/articulo.html?d_date=20020125&xref=20020125elpepinac_17&type=Tes&anchor=elpepinac Best Jose *************************************************** Jose M Guardia Internet, Media & Technology Analyst Barcelona, Spain Ph. (++34) 629-74-26-24 E-mail: josegat_private www.guardiasociados.com *************************************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Events: Congreso Nacional de Periodismo Digital in Huesca, Spain from Jan. 17-18 (http://www.congresoperiodismo.com) and the Second International Conference on Web-Management in Diplomacy in Malta from Feb. 1-3. (http://www.diplomacy.edu/Web/conference2/) -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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