SEPARATE OPINION OF JUDGE MYJER

1 . In the Observations of the Government, much reference is made to an annotation to the case of M.M. v. t he Netherlands (judgment of 8 April 2003) which was published in the NJCM-bulletin (Netherlands Human Rights Law Review) 2003, p. 653-658:

' If the present judgment by the ECtHR stands, it would mean – by extension – that in future, if a criminal makes all manner of threats to a victim by telephone, the victim goes to the police, and the police (with the victim ' s) consent put a tap on his phone, the criminal would win his case in Strasbourg on the ground that his fundamental rights have been violated because his threatening calls had been recorded without a statutory basis; likewise, a kidnapper who rings the family of his victim to make the ransom demand could successfully claim to have been a victim of a violation of Article 8 ECtHR if the police record these telephone calls with the family ' s consent but without a basis in statute law. In my opinion, it is really going too far to require that recordings of this kind may only be made in accordance with statutory procedures. A perpetrator who phones a victim to prepare for his offence or actually to commit the offence should not be able to pose successfully as a victim on the grounds that the recording of incoming calls at the victim ' s end violated his right to the peaceful enjoyment of telephone communication. Or does the ECtHR truly mean to suggest that, in a case such as this one, the police should have sought permission under the rules of the Code of Criminal Procedure to place a normal tap on the telephone of none other than the victim, with all the extra infringements of her privacy that would entail? Or would the ECtHR perhaps prefer the lawyer ' s own telephone to have been tapped in accordance with all the rules, including all the safeguards against violations of his right to refuse to give evidence. '

Since it was I – in another capacity and before I was elected to this Court – who wrote the annotation with which the Government apparently agree and which was indeed very critical of the reasoning of the majority in that judgment, and since I voted in the Van Vondel case in favour of a violation of Article 8, I feel obliged to write this separate opinion.

2 . Yes, as far as the judgment in the case of M.M. is concerned, I am still convinced that the reasoning of the majority in that case may lead to bizarre and unwanted consequences. In that particular case the police had helped a woman who had told the police that M.M., the defence counsel of her detained husband, had made sexual advances towards her. She feared that her word (the only available evidence) would be insufficient against that of M.M. The police then supplied her with a tape recorder linked to her telephone, so that she could record incoming telephone conversations with that lawyer in order to obtain evidence against him. The majority concluded that Article 8 had been violated. My objections are basically the same as those made in the dissenting opinion of former judge Elisabeth Palm, who was appointed by the Dutch Government to replace the former Dutch judge Wilhelmina Thomassen , who had withdrawn from the case. To me it was crucial that, unlike the A. v. France case (judgment of 23 November 1993) – where the police made a crucial contribution by making available for a short time the office of the police superintendent, his telephone and his tape recorder and where an outgoing call was made to collect evidence – in the case of M.M. the woman only recorded incoming calls from M.M. Besides, she could decide herself if she wanted to hand these recordings over to the police or not. I am of the opinion that in these circumstances, from the point of view of the Convention, there was no relevant interference with M.M. ' s privacy rights.

3 . In the present case, however, there is no matter of someone just waiting until the ' suspect ' might phone and make his self-incriminating remarks. Here, like in the case of Heglas v. t he C z ech R epublic (judgment of 1 March 2007) and like in a lot of B-movies, a ' walking bug ' went himself to the applicant and recorded the conversations. The very fact that the police provided the devices (and in respect of one conversation gave specific instructions as to what information should be obtained) constitutes a crucial contribution to an interference with the privacy rights of the applicant, as was laid down in the reasoning in paragraph 49. Since that interference was not ' in accordance with the law ' , there was also in my opinion a violation of Article 8.

[1] . “Runners” are police officers who serve as coach and contact person for civilians acting as police informers or having infiltrated criminal organisations.