A. Demetriou on telecommunications data

Demetriou on telecommunications data – “No one wants to prevent the Police from solving a case” – VIDEO below

Lawyer Antonis Dimitriou commented on the landmark decision by the Supreme Court regarding telecommunications data.

Speaking on the show “Mesimeri kai kantaka”, he referred to the amendments that need to be made to the legislation, saying that “no one wants to prevent the Police from solving the case. The protection of telecommunications data is not absolute. What needs to be done by the Republic of Cyprus is that there should not be a general and indiscriminate retention of telecommunications data. What needs to be done is their targeted use. We have had incidents where people’s photos and personal videos or even messages were kept. Dozens of people are keeping them. In the end, if no one is charged, what will happen to them? The Court’s decisions have not come out of nowhere.”

“What needs to be done is to amend the laws that specify the time for storing data or recording conversations for the time suspicions arose about a person. The Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice clearly state that the protection of telecommunications data is not absolute. It is clear that it must be done in a targeted and measured manner. I do not understand why there is no amendment now for two paragraphs that can be added,” he concluded.

It is recalled that recently the Plenary of the Supreme Court had decided that the 2007 Law on the Retention of Telecommunications Data for the Purpose of Investigating Serious Criminal Offenses is unconstitutional, however, investigators of cases with a loophole in the 1996 Law on the Protection of the Privacy of Private Communications were able, upon their request, to secure access to the telephone device of a defendant in the case of the discovery of a large quantity of cannabis of approximately 83.6 in a container in Ypsonas.

The defense appealed to the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari, “seeking to annul the order of access and/or disclosure to telecommunications data and/or private communication issued by the Limassol Court, which authorized access and/or disclosure thereof,” with the Attorney General challenging the validity of the request.

In the objection filed by the Attorney General, five reasons are put forward for which he considers that the application under consideration is to be rejected, expressing the position that the application, pursuant to which the relevant decree was issued, is based on the Protection of the Privacy of Private Communications Law, Law 92(I)/1996 and has no relation to Law 183(I)/2007.

The argumentation by the lawyer representing the Legal Service was also relevant, whose position was that in the case at hand, the subject of the decree of the Limassol District Court was a specific device for a specific suspect, with a clear description of both the offenses for which the decree was issued and the details of the suspect himself. Referring to Law 183(I)/2007, he argued, among other things, that in contrast to it, Law 92(I)96 grants access to telecommunications data of a specific communication and in a targeted manner.