The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled that national authorities cannot retain phone data in a “general and indiscriminate” manner, while specific information could be used to tackle heinous crimes. Generally, the Court said that national courts are to decide on the admissibility of evidence, but that the general rule should be that Member States laws should not allow crime prevention through the “general and indiscriminate” retention of mobile phone data. The case in question has been brought to the Court by the Supreme Court of Ireland in relation to a murder case, where the suspect was convicted to life imprisonment allegedly based on traffic and location data of telephone calls wrongly admitted as evidence by the court of first instance. Find the CJEU press release here.
