In the run-up to this election Egypt has attempted to silence opposition voices. In October, Egypt issued new media restrictions [JURIST report] that critics say effectively put all live television media, including talk shows and news shows, under government control. The telecommunications regulator cancelled the broadcast permits of all private media companies forcing them to apply for new licenses through the state television agency. The Muslim Brotherhood has also been targeted. In April, Attorney General Abdul Magid Mahmoud announced that five international MB members will be tried in an Egyptian criminal court [JURIST report] on charges of money laundering. Egypt has also used the emergency laws extensively against other opposition parties. In May, the Egyptian Parliament voted to extend [JURIST report] the country's state of emergency [JURIST news archive] for two years. Despite the two-year extension, parliament voted to limit the application of the emergency laws [Al Jazeera report] only to cases of terrorism and drug trafficking.

Also noteworthy here is that the home itself was never directly the object of a search. The location where the search took place was not the home but the transformer box where the power lines entering the home could be accessed. After some confusion in the courts below about whether the transformer was located on Mr. Gomboc’s property, it was common ground before this Court that it was not. Accordingly, no direct territorial privacy interest is engaged in this case.

Earlier this year, Canada launched legal probes to investigate privacy violations of both Google and Facebook [JURIST reports]. Earlier this week, a US appeals court allowed a previous ruling against prolonged surveillance with global positioning systems (GPS) to stand [JURIST report]. In August, the court ruled that prolonged monitoring of a suspect's GPS data violates his Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure [JURIST report]. The appellate court found that there exists a reasonable expectation of privacy in the "whole of a person's movements over the course of a month" because the combination of all such movements is not actually or constructively exposed to the public. The decision adds to a split among appellate courts on the issue, although the court noted that decisions to the contrary "were not alert to the distinction ... between short-term and prolonged surveillance" in the relevant precedent.