Chancellor of Justice: Surveillance society will gradually take over

A society where people no longer have privacy and where entrepreneurs no longer have the right to think about how to better promote their businesses within the limits of the law is dangerous, Chancellor of Justice Ülle Madise said in an interview with "Vikerhommik."
The Tax Board's plan to obtain information from banks about the amounts of money that have passed through their accounts has sparked quite a debate in Estonia. Naturally, society has also turned to the Chancellor of Justice, with Postimees publishing a news flash earlier this week indicating that the Chancellor of Justice declined to comment on the matter. Is it important for society to hear your assessment of how correct such a plan could be?
The Chancellor of Justice has to proceed from the facts, and when we formulate an official position, we must first make it clear what we are talking about.
And the way we usually work is that if we receive a complaint, we investigate whether the reason might be an unconstitutional provision. If it is, we do indeed initiate a constitutional review.
Yesterday, the parliament approved three proposals in which the Chancellor of Justice identified the norms that have caused significant concern and problems among the public, and pledged to rectify them.
In relation to the bills and plans, the Chancellor of Justice can only comment if the issue has already been made sufficiently clear. At the moment, this is simply not the case.
A few days ago, however, you also managed to leave a more specific phrase on social media: "The surveillance society is harmful to all; it is wise to foresee the harm and avoid it." How clear are you about where the surveillance society begins and where it does not begin?
A surveillance society is likely to evolve gradually. At some point, it will simply be there. Recently, I had the privilege of explaining the issue of cameras in public spaces on ERR's "Vikerhommik."
So this question of whether it's a surveillance society where a person's every move, every action, every purchase, every food stamp, how long they sleep, how they exercise, who they drive with, if they even have a car; and also for entrepreneurs, that every one of their trade secrets and ideas about how to promote their business, that all of that should be like an open book. So you have to constantly think about what that means for the human psyche, what that means for society, and what that means for creativity.
In fact, the issue of the surveillance society is part of the daily work of the Chancellor of Justice. And in a nutshell, this society where people have no privacy, where entrepreneurs have no right to think about how best to promote their business within the boundaries of the law, is a dangerous society, and it's our job to keep making that clear.
Below your social media post, Dmitry Yegorov, a former senior official who worked in both the Ministry of Finance and the Tax Board, wrote: "As Marek Helm said in his day, 'Economic freedom also means that as an entrepreneur I can sleep well at night knowing that my competitor won't pull the rug out from under me with unfair competition and tax dodges.'"
He also said: "In many countries, the exchange of banking information works well, to varying degrees, and severely limits the ability of fraudsters to evade taxes. In the Nordic countries, personal income data is public information. And the Estonian Tax and Customs Board (MTA) already has information on Estonians' bank accounts abroad. And within the European Union, the exchange of information is mandatory." How useful are these arguments?
This confirms that it is inappropriate for the Chancellor of Justice to take a position on a particular plan before it is clear exactly what that plan is.
The minister of finance has already confirmed that, contrary to the wishes of the tax authorities, the planned change in the law would not affect private individuals. Is there a fundamental difference between tracking a natural person and a legal entity?
There is a difference. But I would suggest thinking about the need for clear laws. Not some kind of guidelines, not some kind of unclear rules from which it is impossible to deduce what, how, how much tax is due. And, in fact, the state has to check that these norms are respected. The question of how to check is what is being discussed here.

I recall a significant controversy surrounding the introduction of the obligation to declare transactions worth at least €1,000. At the time, I was a constitutional law professor and a legal advisor to the president. The president vetoed the original plan. The reason was that companies were afraid of creating a database of trade secrets that would be accessible to competitors. So they will not sleep well at night.
At that time, the situation was, I hope, different from what it is now because the tax administration's own employees were also representing companies in court. Naturally, the operators believed that the existence of such a database, which competitors' helpers could access, was detrimental. I hope that the president's veto at the time made those lines very clear and stopped that kind of portfolio shuffling.
The ability to view all types of data within the hospital system has sometimes led to an unhealthy interest in doing so.
Exactly. Logistics systems do not always function as efficiently as they should. Of course, when we discuss health data, such as the hospital's access to highly sensitive diagnoses, medications, and patient information, we must store the data securely and prevent its theft. We must configure the system to require identity verification, such as an ID card, from anyone accessing the data, and to implement both internal and external controls.
Does the internal audit still periodically examine who reviewed what, and why? And that there is also an external audit that comes in and checks that all these internal systems are working, that patients can still trust their doctor.
Does this also imply that society needs to have fairly accurate information about this, or at the very least, for those individuals and companies whose data has been examined, to know exactly which tax official examined what and when?
This is one way of organizing controls. Of course, there are other ways.
It is very easy to say that a decent person has nothing to fear. A decent businessman has nothing to fear, a decent law-abiding person has nothing to fear, and so what if all the details of his life, where he has been, how he has been, everything is known. I would still suggest that perhaps it would be the case that there would be nothing to fear if there were no bad people in the world at all. But that is not the case, and it is unlikely to be the case.
And then you can slowly get to the point where, for example, a political force consolidates itself in power. Both the free press and the freedom of opinion face extinction. I recently listened to an interview on Vikerradio discussing how Slovakia's freedom of thought has essentially come to an end. Nobody wants to say anything about the government anymore. Afterwards, power and wealth begin to quietly accumulate in the hands of a select few. By the way, they are exempt from paying all these taxes and other fees.
They also got there relatively quickly.
And it happens relatively quickly. That's why even after the first steps that essentially weaken society, even though on the surface it looks like security is getting better, when people don't have freedom and are under control, society becomes weaker. You become more open to corruption, and eventually, the real thoughts go under the floor or behind the kitchen table.
And what's worse – using China as an example – we once had a very interesting discussion in the Chancellor of Justice's office precisely about totalitarian regimes – how harmful this kind of surveillance society and lack of freedom is also in the sense that it discourages innovation and invention.
True, these countries are usually very keen to steal and copy other people's trade secrets and inventions for free. But for some reason, when people are so constrained, they have to think all the time about what other people think, what the country thinks of me, whether I am thinking right, whether I am saying the right things, whether I am eating the right foods, whether I am always driving exactly the speed limit, and so on. It starts to stifle creativity, and the end result is that nothing really gets invented in this society.

As you said, step by step, we are getting there. With clever rhetoric a lot of things can be suppressed. The finance minister said something like this: "Even now, the tax and customs authorities can ask the banks for all the financial information they need as part of the tax process." So what is the loophole?
For example, if there is already a suspicion that someone is committing a tax crime, the investigation is properly formalized, and these internal and external control mechanisms are triggered in the same way. It cannot be random data mining. These actions cannot be arbitrary. We also protect the rights of the person or company whose data is under investigation. They also have the right to go to court. Ultimately, they must understand the actions taken, the reasons behind them, the penalties imposed, and the directives given. This is the rule of law, the normal course of state life.
Again, I don't want to condemn the authorities lightly. Carri Ginter recently gave a very good interview that you referred to here. And he also said that, in a sense, it is normal for a tax collector to work out how best to collect taxes, and that in a free society, these plans come out in the open and the arguments for and against them can be debated in public.
By the way, if we knew what very interesting ideas the police have, such as ensuring internal security, we would be amazed. It's perfectly legitimate for them to come up with such ideas.
On the other hand, companies are openly considering optimizing and conducting all kinds of conferences and seminars.
Exactly. In a way, they have the right to think about optimization because that's where innovation comes from, that's where savings come from, and that's where significantly greener technologies come from.
It is sometimes argued that there is too little debate in society. Is what is happening today a debate?
I think so. Fortunately, it didn't get too personal here either. Sometimes these reactions are a little too colorful for me, but again, it's good that they are coming out. It's good that we have a free society, and the press is picking up on these issues. If there is no support for the plan or strong arguments against it, it will never come to fruition.
The second reading of the car tax bill went through parliament last night, and the third one is just a formality. Does the Chancellor of Justice still want to weigh in on this issue?
The Chancellor of Justice's task is to look at whether the laws that the president promulgates are constitutional. So we'll have to do this work all over again. Since the first versions of the draft have already been flagged by people with disabilities and families with children, we've taken a quick look. The way I see it, this law has definitely improved from a constitutional point of view as it has gone through the Riigikogu. But it'll have to be looked at again.
There's nothing special about taxing the ownership or use of a car. Finland has a car tax, for instance. I'm sure many of us are aware of this. But we have to make sure the tax rate isn't too high. And we have to make sure that taxes aren't imposed on people who really need a car, like to transport a disabled loved one or because they have a large family with children. Otherwise, they might have to give up their way of life.
Or you come up with something?
It's still too early to say for sure, because the draft has changed so much that I haven't had a chance to follow it. But I've asked my colleagues, and they've already given me a brief overview of the changes that have been made.
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Editor: Urmet Kook, Kristina Kersa
Source: Vikerraadio