On Tuesday, the European Court of Justice ruled that Estonia's current practice of criminal proceedings is incompatible with European Union law in several respects. For years, Estonia has forced all mobile operators to store all data related to people's mobile phones - essentially everything but the content of the phone call itself.
Currently all phonecall related data, such as who is calling who, when, how often, using what phone, how long did the call last, where was the caller, where was the recipient of the call, etc has to be retained by the service provider for one year.
Until now, telecommunications operators have had to give out this data to the Prosecutor's Office for use as an evidence or for obtaining a warrant to gather new evidence.
In general, the role of the Prosecutor's Office in the admissibility of various procedural acts in Estonia is quite large. For example, in order to search someone's home in connection with some criminal proceedings, the prosecutor's office gives permission. However, if you want to search the property of a person who is not involved in a crime, you have to get a court order.
On Tuesday, the European Court of Justice ruled that people's communications data should not be arbitrarily requested in all forms of crime. The Court emphasized that the state should not indiscriminately store the communication data of all people, but only in order to fight serious crimes or to prevent a major threat to public security.
In addition, the Court stated that access to and use of such data in criminal proceedings should be subject to judicial or independent administrative review. However, this is not the case in Estonia, because the Prosecutor's Office manages the investigation procedure and, if necessary, represents the state prosecution. Thus, regardless of the internal work process of the prosecutor's office, it is not completely independent in granting permits.
However, this is still a preliminary ruling of the European Court of Justice, which the Estonian Supreme Court asked when making its decision. The decision of the Supreme Court will take some time, but it cannot be very different from the decision of the Court of Justice.
