[JURIST] European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx [official website] expressed concern in letters [PDF text; press release, PDF] sent Monday to the Portuguese ministers for justice and the interior that privacy and data protection are increasingly being sacrificed in the name of security and national defense. The letter was sent just weeks before Portugal takes over the European Union [official website] presidency from incumbent Germany [German presidency website]. Hustinx, who advises EU governing bodies on privacy rights, challenged the view that people must be willing to give up fundamental freedoms for security:

This position could be potentially dangerous and may produce more problems than it seeks to solve. Not only does it reveal a lack of understanding of the current framework of human rights in general, and data protection legislation in particular, which both enable proportionate measures that are necessary for public security or defence, it also ignores the lessons learned about the abuse of fundamental rights from dealing with terrorism within Europe's borders over the last 50 years.