EU Court Endorses Minor Privacy Intrusion for Petty Crime
On Tuesday, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice concluded that invasions of privacy are justified not just by the objective of fighting serious crime. “When the interference that such access entails is not serious, that access is capable of being justified by the objective of preventing, investigating, detecting and prosecuting ‘criminal offenses’ generally,” the ruling states.
As such, the ruling concludes, it would not unduly interfere with privacy rights to let police access “data for the purpose of identifying the owners of SIM cards activated with a stolen mobile telephone, such as the surnames, forenames and, if need be, addresses of the owners.” Such interference “is not sufficiently serious to entail that access being limited, in the area of prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of criminal offenses, to the objective of fighting serious crime,” the ruling continues.
Source: EU Court Endorses Minor Privacy Intrusion for Petty Crime
