The snooping law, also called Lex Nokia, was approved in the Finnish Parliament two weeks ago.

EDRi-member Electronic Frontier Finland has appealed to Tarja Halonen, the President of Finland, to intervene: before signing it President Halonen should request the Supreme Court's opinion on whether the amended Act on the Protection of Privacy in Electronic Communications clashes with the constitution.

Member of Parliament, Jaakko Laakso (Left Alliance) suggested that the Parliament should request a statement on the constitutionality of the law from the Venice Commission. Some parliamentarians, for example Heli Järvinen (Greens), also agreed with professor Tuomas Ojanen, who has advised that some organizations should take the matter up with the European Court of Human Rights.

Other EDRi-members have confirmed that the situation can be worst in other European countries. In Spain there is no specific law, but based on a sentence from the Spanish Supreme Court, employers can inspect data and communications at work under the condition that the employer previously declares a policy for the use of computers and Internet at work, e.g. what digital communications and files are going to be inspected. Therefore, employers can establish the level of privacy at work, as for the Supreme Court the usage of computers and Internet is not covered by the law on worker's rights.

In France there is a decision from 9 July 2008 by the Cassation Court concluding that "connections established by an employee to Internet websites during his working time and thanks to the computer provided by his employer to execute his work are presumed to have a professional character, such that the employer may search them in order to identify them, in the absence of the employee". In other words, the whole navigation history of an employee can be searched by the employer.

Previously, a decision of 2006 by the same court in a different case, established that all computer files of an employee are presumed as professional, unless they are explicitely marked as "personal", and can thus be searched in his absence.

For email messages, the same court ruled in a third case in 2001 that email should obey the same regime (professional, unless marked as "personal").

In summary, in France anything unmarked as "personal" is searchable by the employer, in the absence of the employee.

Source: EDRI-gram „Nokia Law Approved" Number 7.5, March 11, 2009