Supreme Court: requesting email content from service provider requires court authorisation
The Estonian Supreme Court has decided that during criminal proceedings, investigative authorities do not have the right to demand email account contents from a service provider without court authorisation, as this violates communications privacy protection.
Supreme Court: requesting email content from service provider requires court authorisation
The Estonian Supreme Court made an important decision limiting the powers of investigative authorities in obtaining digital information. The court found that during criminal proceedings, investigators cannot demand email account contents from a service provider without court authorisation. In order to obtain emails from an operator, prior court approval is necessary.
The decision arose in a fraud-related court case in which Toomas Tamme, Küllike Namme and Kalev Kangur were charged. The suspicions against them ultimately received a not guilty verdict in district court, circuit court and the Supreme Court alike. During investigative measures, the Internal Security Service had requested four years' worth of correspondence from one suspected person's account from Telia.
The court found that obtaining email contents through an operator substantially violated the law. For this reason, the email account inspection protocol cannot be used as evidence in proceedings. Because the Internal Security Service obtained the emails without court consent, this was considered a gross violation of communications privacy.
The prosecution had argued that the emails had already reached the recipient and therefore could be requested through a simple query. The defence countered that the messages were still in the transmission process and obtaining them required court authorisation. The Supreme Court's criminal division agreed with the defence's argument and considered the prosecution's interpretation to be erroneous.
In the court's assessment, the constitution protects communications privacy and exceptions are permitted only with court authorisation. In previous decisions, the Supreme Court has explained that messages in transit receive stricter protection, since they are not under the control of any party.
Regardless of whether an email is accessible in the recipient's account, access to it from the service provider's database is considered interference with communication. The correspondents do not direct these data and the end user has no ability to influence the email's backup, retention or disclosure.
The Supreme Court also found unacceptable that authorities demanded the entire email account contents without limiting the query. The prosecution was unable to logically justify why it was necessary to use approximately four years' worth of emails.
Nevertheless, the court did not rule out that such data could be collected with court authorisation during a targeted search, for instance by searching emails from servers. It is also possible to follow the procedure established in the Postal and Telecommunications Act.
Source: ERR News
Source: ERR News