Germany: European Court of Justice ruling on EncroChat could lead to new legal challenges computerweekly.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from computerweekly.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Dutch Supreme Court has upheld the use of intercepted messages from an encrypted phone network, EncroChat, in a criminal conviction. In a ruling yesterday, the court found that it was bound by the principle of mutual trust to accept that EncroChat evidence was gathered by French police lawfully under French law. The Supreme Court’s ruling is in line with a preliminary decision by the courts’ Advocate General in September which found that the conviction should be upheld. It follows complaints from the defendant’s lawyers that EncroChat evidence could not lawfully be used as evidence in criminal cases under Dutch law. Defence lawyers argued during the case that Dutch prosecutors should disclose the extent of Dutch involvement in a hacking operation against EncroChat, which was overseen by a Dutch and French Joint Investigation Team (JIT).
The European Court of Justice has heard legal arguments from EU member states whether electronic communications obtained by an international police operation to hack the EncroChat encrypted phone network can be lawfully used as evidence in courts in the European Union. Prosecutors from France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Hungary, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Ireland, gave oral evidence to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Luxembourg during a seven hour hearing yesterday in a complex case focusing on European law. Defence lawyers believe the case could have implications for hundreds of prosecutions of people accused of drug dealing and organised crime on the basis of hacked messages from EncroChat, and another encrypted phone network, Sky ECC, where there is no supporting evidence of criminality, if the CJEU finds there were breaches of EU law.
Dutch defence lawyers say in an open letter that there is a risk of unfair trials unless they are allowed to test the reliability and legitimacy of hacked cryptophone evidence.