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Belgium: Police to exploit tapping law

01 January 1995

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A report by the League of Human Rights in Gent on a new telephone tapping law in Belgium shows that some police chiefs intend to make maximum use of it. Commissioner Trotteyn, of the Gent police, says that he will have difficulties coping with the restrictions that are still in place on tapping even after the new law has come into effect. The new law only allows police to tap telephones if there are already indications that the law has been broken and a judge must sanction the tap. Furthermore the police are not allowed to use the taps pro-actively to "discover" crimes. Therefore the police cannot make use of information that is acquired through telephone tapping that has no relation to the crimes that justified tapping in the first place.

The Commissioner says the police intend to find ways around the restrictions that the new law imposes: "In order to be able to use the evidence gained by tapping to start a new investigation, we could always say that the information acquired through tapping was given to us by an anonymous tip-off. In practice this has already happened".

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