The blanket collection of metadata on communications in the Czech Republic is illegal. Iuridicum Remedium wins data retention dispute.
The Municipal Court in Prague ruled in a dispute that lasted more than four years. EDRi member IuRe represented journalist Jan Cibulka in the case. He demanded an apology from the state for the Czech state collecting information about his whereabouts or with whom he calls and writes under the data retention regulation.
Background to the dispute
A Czech Republic data retention law mandates that metadata on the mobile communications of all citizens is stored for six months through telecommunication operators. This data includes information on phone traffic and the locations of the internet connection. The Constitutional Court in the Czech Republic ruled in 2019 that storing metadata about everyone’s communications is not unconstitutional. IuRe’s lawyers have therefore decided to take a different approach to challenge the law. They have agreed with journalist Jan Cibulka, who has been covering the topic for a long time, to file a civil lawsuit against the state.
Specifically, the journalist Jan Cibulka, on behalf of the lawyer Jan Voboril from IuRe, demanded an apology from the state for not properly implementing the European e-privacy directive and for not seeking to correct Czech legislation so that it complies with European law.
“The state has failed”
After initial setbacks, IuRe succeeded in the Czech Supreme Court last year. According to it, the state is responsible for the incorrect implementation of European law and the fundamental question needs to be answered whether or not the Czech legislation is in line with European law.
This question was finally answered by the Municipal Court this April. “The state has failed” the judge said in her decision. She meant that the Czech state had failed to implement the European regulation correctly. The Court also concluded that even the processing of data in the context of data retention itself constitutes individual harm.
Possible consequences of the decision
The decision is important not only in the Czech context, but also in the European context. The Court of Justice of the European Union has already confirmed several times that the blanket collection of metadata on communications is not possible. The Czech lower courts that have dealt with IuRe’s claim have so far avoided the issue of the relationship between Czech and European law. Finally, it was only the Municipal Court in Prague that clearly stated that Czech legislation contradicts European legislation when metadata on everyone is collected and stored for six months.
The Czech state will now probably appeal to the Supreme Court. However, the Supreme Court already granted the appeal of IuRe and journalist Jan Cibulka last year, so there should be no major reversal. Moreover, the fresh judgment of the Municipal Court will soon become final and the state will therefore have to apologize to journalist Jan Cibulka for collecting his data. It also opens the way for a lawsuit from other citizens, including financial compensation.
The verdict could mean a quick end to the widespread snooping in the Czech Republic (data retention), which IuRe has been fighting for twenty years.
The decision is also influencing the political debate – just a few weeks ago an unexpected amendment proposed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade on the initiative of the Ministry of the Interior, which was intended to extend the scope of collected data also to the target side of the Internet connection. This proposal appeared in the legislative process before the court decision mentioned above. It attracted a great deal of media and public attention. It was interpreted as an attempt by the state to monitor the content of websites that people visit. Within two days, leading political figures commented on the matter, saying that everything was the fault of officials from the ministry and happened without the knowledge of the ministers, which perhaps means an early end to this proposal.
IuRe will follow up the judgment with an information campaign on data retention. In fact, it was the campaign and public support that started the whole case – it was primarily funded by a crowdfunding campaign launched by IuRe at the end of 2020. IuRe’s activities in the field of data retention are also supported by EDRi. So this is a collective victory for civil society!
Contribution by: Hynek Trojánek, EDRi member, Iuridicum Remedium (IuRe)