For several years now, the civil society in Georgia has been speaking out about the problems related to secret wiretapping and surveillance and the urgency of reform in this area. About a year ago, the civil society representatives submitted a legislative initiative to the Parliament. However, these amendments have encountered fierce resistance from the law-enforcement authorities and, therefore, the process is being delayed. Despite the declared will of a ruling political party to change the existing malicious system, efficient steps have not been taken in this respect, owing to which the civil sector has launched in March 2014 the active advocacy campaign This Affects You Too - They Are Still Listening. Regardless of the efforts of he civil society, law-enforcement authorities have strongly resisted the rapid adoption of the law. Recently secret surveillance and wiretapping has become a topic of political debates and discourse. Involved in discussions over the issue were political parties, which, among others, were obviously driven by political interests, displayed often in the attempts to politicize the campaign, and sometimes to discredit it. All of this was aggravated further by developments around TV company Rustavi 2, which have intensified ongoing discussions. In view of specifics of this case, it is crucial that the investigation administers the process transparently and impartially and provides timely and justified answers to public inquiries, especially when the developments exacerbate in light of upcoming local elections in Georgia.

NGOs united under This Affects You Too campaign believe that today as never before the efforts of all parties are required for creating the modern system of surveillance and wiretapping in Georgia, which will exclude the infringement upon the individuals' private life on the grounds of securing citizens' safety and public dissemination of their personal information. To this end, it is vital that: 

• In the shortest period possible the Georgian authorities take efficient steps and unambiguously express firm political will to modify the current flawed system of secret surveillance and wiretapping. It is important to build public confidence towards the new system, which on one hand will secure the citizens' safety, and on the other hand will protect the inviolability of their private life.

• As soon as possible the Parliament of Georgia adopts the draft law initiated one year ago and approved by international experts. In case of enactment of proposed regulations under the package of legislative amendments, Georgia will have legislation built on the principles of human rights and freedoms, thus guaranteeing the introduction of the best European and international practices. Adoption of the draft law will make it possible to protect every citizen's rights without damaging the country's security.

• Law-enforcement authorities quit resisting to progressive legislation and misleading the public about threats that the draft law allegedly poses to the country's security. We hope that at least during the second hearing of the draft law in the Parliament of Georgia the Ministry of Interior and the Prosecutor's Office of Georgia will refer to concrete articles containing such threat.

• Political parties refrain from an attempt to politicize "This Affects You Too" campaign and abuse this topic in a pre-election context. We believe that as the previous, as well as current authorities are responsible for the existing gaps in the legislation regulating surveillance and wiretapping in Georgia and the current practice within the law-enforcement agencies.

• Media outlets take into account that the current system in the country fails to protect information on private life and effectively control and monitor actions of law-enforcers. Therefore, the practice of dissemination of private life images is unfortunately frequent. For this very reason media outlets should feel largest responsibility before the public. We acknowledge that freedom of expression in respect of events that must be necessarily known to people in a democratic state to exercise citizen self-governance cannot be restricted by referring to inviolability of private life and protection of personal data. Yet, it is equally important that when frequently disseminating such extremely sensitive information, a media outlet does not turn into a weapon in the hands of interested groups, which may be acting not in the public but in the narrow party or other type of interests (including security-related).

Information disseminated by Rustavi 2 was a key testament that the problem of secret surveillance and wiretapping is still pressing in Georgia. We find that the overall goal of both the public and the authorities should be to stop manipulating with secret recordings in Georgia and publicizing them. All parties involved must take efforts in this respect: on one hand, the government must undertake broad reforms within the law-enforcement system, and on the other hand, media must express principled position and in the future refuse to the extent possible to disseminate secret recordings containing personal information.