7.  The applicants were born in 1972, 1965, 1980, 1961 and 1980 respectively and live in Chişinău. They are members of “Lawyers for Human Rights”, a Chişinău-based non-governmental organisation specialised in the representation of applicants before the Court. 8.  According to the applicants, after the coming to power of the Communist Party the number of violations of human rights increased considerably. In that context their organisation was created, whose sole purpose was the protection of human rights by assisting persons who sought to introduce applications with the European Court of Human Rights. 9.  As a result, the applicants considered that they had caused the Government serious harm in terms of damage to their image and financial loss as a result of the findings of violation in cases they had helped to bring before this Court. 10.  The applicants maintained that they ran a serious risk of having their telephones tapped as a result of their activity, due to the state of the legislation in force. They did not claim to have been victims of any specific interception of their communications, whether by telephone or post, and they had not instituted any domestic proceedings in that respect. 11.  The Government disputed the allegation concerning the increase of the number of violations of human rights after the Communist Party had won the elections. 12.  On 17 January 2008 one of the applicants wrote to the President of the Supreme Court of Justice and asked for statistical information concerning, inter alia, the number of applications lodged by the investigating bodies with courts for interception of telephone conversations and the number of successful and unsuccessful applications. 13.  In a letter of 6 February 2008 the Head of the President's Office of the Supreme Court of Justice replied that in 2005 of a total of 2,609 applications for interception lodged, 98.81% had been successful; in 2006 of the 1,931 applications lodged, 97.93% had been successful; and in 2007 of the 2,372 applications lodged, 99.24% had been successful.