Privacy and Investigative Needs: Progressing from Incompatible to Complementary Positions

Abstract

All too frequently, security and the protection of human rights are presented as alternatives, being considered as mutually incompatible and therefore mutually exclusive objectives. Such a schematic proposition, however, is not one with which one can agree, since in a system calling itself democratic, the exigencies of security must necessarily be reconciled to the demands of basic human rights. As a result, one must advance from the idea of contrasting standpoints to an essential and incontrovertible where each such element complements the other.