of upholding these essential freedoms by rushing through counter-terrorism measures that undermined human rights and the very values that had come under attack. 2016 witnessed a profound paradigm shift: a move from the view that it is the role of governments to provide security so that people can enjoy their rights, to the view that governments must restrict people’s rights in order to provide security. The result has been a dangerous redrawing of the boundaries between the powers of the state and the rights of individuals. One of the most alarming developments was the effort by states to make it easier to invoke and prolong a “state of emergency”. Hungary led the way with the adoption of legislation providing for sweeping executive powers in the event of a declared emergency, including the banning of public assemblies, severe restrictions on the freedom of movement and the freezing of assets with no judicial controls. The Bulgarian Parliament passed a similar set of measures at first vote in July. In December, France extended for the fifth time the state of emergency imposed following the November 2015 attacks. The emergency powers were significantly expanded in the July extension, which reintroduced house searches without prior judicial approval (a power dropped from an earlier extension) and new powers to prohibit public events on public security grounds, which were variously used to ban protests. Figures released by the government in December 2016 indicated that since November 2015, 4,292 house searches had been conducted and 612 people had been assigned to forced residency, raising concern that the emergency powers were being used disproportionately. Measures once viewed as exceptional were embedded in ordinary criminal law in several European states. These included extensions in the period of pre-charge detention for terrorism-related suspects in Slovakia and Poland and a proposal to do the same for all charges in Belgium. In the Netherlands and Bulgaria, proposals were put before Parliament to introduce administrative control Amnesty International Report 2016/17 measures to restrict people’s freedom of movement without prior judicial authorization. Pioneered in the UK and France, such controls, in some cases amounting to house arrest, were imposed on the basis of secret security files leaving those affected unable to effectively challenge measures with harmful effects on their lives and families. Hundreds of people were prosecuted, in violation of the right to freedom of expression, for offences of apologizing for or glorifying terrorism, especially in France, often for comments posted on social media, and less frequently in Spain. A proposed EU Directive on Combating Terrorism, which was still pending adoption at the end of the year, would lead to the proliferation of such laws. A proposal to prohibit the vague “promoting terrorism” was put forward in Germany, while bills setting out similar offences were put before Parliament in Belgium and the Netherlands. Across Europe, states significantly enhanced their surveillance powers, in defiance of repeated rulings by the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights that covert surveillance and the interception and retention of communications data would violate the right to privacy unless based on a reasonable suspicion of serious criminal activity and to the extent strictly necessary for making an effective contribution to combating such activity. Both courts have repeatedly stated that national legislation on surveillance must provide sufficient guarantees against misuse, including prior authorization by a court or other independent authority. The UK introduced perhaps the most wide-ranging bulk and targeted surveillance powers with the adoption of the Investigatory Powers Act in November. Commonly referred to as the “snooper’s charter”, it permitted a broad range of vaguely defined interception, interference and data retention practices, and imposed new requirements on private companies to store communications data. All powers under the new law – both targeted and mass – could be authorized by a government 43