Police can access mobile phone data for minor crimes, EU top court rules

European police can access data on people’s phones even when they aren’t suspected of serious crimes, the EU’s top court ruled Friday.

“To consider that only the fight against serious crime is capable of justifying access to data contained in a mobile telephone would unduly limit the investigative powers of the competent authorities,” the court said in a press release this morning.

Such a limitation on police powers would mean an “increased risk of impunity for criminal offenses,” the court said.

Judges ruled that access to mobile phone data must be subject to a prior review by a court of independent authority except in the most urgent cases. 

The case came from Austria, where an unnamed person sued the police for seizing his phone after he received a parcel containing 85 grams of cannabis. 

Digital rights organization EDRi said in an analysis of the case published last year that mobile phone data is “particularly problematic because there is no technical way to limit police access to a particular piece of information on the device.”