Surveillance of persons and items (hereinafter referred to as “surveillance”) will be understood as acquiring knowledge on persons and items conducted in a covert manner by technical or other means.
This measure may be used only when the purpose in view may not be reached in other ways or if its reaching would otherwise be considerably more complicated. Rights and liberties of persons may be restricted only in an absolutely necessary extent.
If a police authority ascertains that the accused person is communicating with his defense counsel, it is obliged to destroy the record containing this communication and not to use facts learned in this connection in any way.
The request must be substantiated by a suspicion of a specific criminal activity, and if known, also by data on persons or items that are to be monitored. The authorization will state a time limit, for which the surveillance will be conducted and which cannot exceed six months. The authority that authorized the surveillance may prolong the time limit by a written order issued on the basis of a new written request, in each case for a time limit not exceeding six months.
Without fulfilling the conditions of the approval of a prosecutor or a judge, the surveillance may be conducted if the person, whose rights and liberties are to be interfered with, grants their explicit consent therewith. If this consent is post facto withdrawn, the surveillance will be immediately terminated.
Records made in the course of the surveillance and the attached protocol may be used as evidence in another criminal case than the case, in which the surveillance was authorized by a prosecutor, only if proceedings on an intentional criminal offense is conducted in this case or if the person, whose rights and liberties were interfered with, consents therewith.
In legal terms there is no difference between cross-border observation and cross-border tracking by a technical device such as GPS in the Czech Republic, as such, the same conditions apply to both measures.