The number of secret surveillance operations in Hungary decreased last year.
This is an old post. Information may be outdated.
This is fewer than the 149 permits issued the previous year. Since each permit can cover multiple individuals, state agencies may have monitored more people last year.
In the preceding year, the 149 permits pertained to a total of 251 individuals, but the exact number of people observed last year was not disclosed. However, there were likely many more instances of activities such as telephone wiretapping.
The Minister of Justice can grant permission for secret information gathering. Last year, the Ministry of Justice did not reveal how many such cases it handled. They only stated that in 2021, they received 1469 external permit-related information gathering requests.
In January, the social media platform Meta published data related to various state and regulatory data requests for the first half of 2023. According to this data, the Hungarian government sent 1224 requests in 2022, and within the first half of 2023, they had already sent 1033 data requests. Additionally, they received 13 urgent requests from Hungary1.