In a Chamber judgment in the case of Trabajo Rueda v Spain (application no. 32600/12 – full judgment
available only in French) the ECtHR has held, by six votes to one, that there
had been: a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private life) of the ECHR
when police accessed computer files in a non-emergency and without judicial
authorisation.
Summary
The case concerned the seizure of Mr Trabajo Rueda’s
computer on the grounds that it contained child pornography material. The Court
held that the police access to files in Mr Trabajo Rueda’s personal computer
and his conviction amounted to an interference with his right to respect for
his private life. It noted that that interference was prescribed by law,
combined with the case-law of the Constitutional Court establishing the rule
that prior judicial authorisation was required where an individual’s private
life was likely to be infringed except in emergency situations. In an
emergency, subsequent judicial
scrutiny was possible.
However, the Court deemed that the police seizure of the
computer and inspection of the files which it contained, without prior judicial
authorisation, had not been proportionate to the legitimate aims pursued (‘prevention
of crime’ and ‘protection of the rights of others’) and had not been ‘necessary
in a democratic society’. The Court held that it was difficult to assess the
urgency of the situation requiring the police to seize the files from Mr
Trabajo Rueda’s personal computer and to access their content, bypassing the
normal requirement of prior judicial authorisation, when in fact the computer
in question was already in the hands of the police and prior authorisation
could have been obtained fairly quickly without impeding the police inquiries.
Principal facts
The applicant, Carlos Trabajo Rueda, is a Spanish national
who was born in 1976 and lives in Seville (Spain). On 17 December 2007 Mr
Trabajo Rueda brought his computer to a computer shop to have a defective data
recorder replaced. The technician duly replaced the part and tested it by
opening a number of files, whereupon he noticed that they contained child
pornography material. On 18 December 2007 he reported the facts to the
authorities and handed over the computer to the police, who examined its
content and passed it on to the police computer experts. The investigating
judge was then informed of the ongoing police inquiries.
On 20 December 2007 Mr Trabajo Rueda was arrested on his way
to the computer shop to pick up his computer. In May 2008 he was sentenced to
four years’ imprisonment by the Seville Audiencia provincial for possession and
circulation of pornographic images of minors. Mr Trabajo Rueda invited the
court to declare the evidence null and void on the grounds that his right to
respect for his private life had been infringed by the fact that the police had
accessed the content and archives of his computer, but this request was
dismissed. Mr Trabajo Rueda appealed on points of law and lodged an amparo
appeal with the Constitutional Court, both of which remedies proved
unsuccessful.
Decision of the Court
The Court held, with one member offering a separate opinion,
that the fact of accessing files in Mr Trabajo Rueda’s personal computer and
subsequently convicting him had amounted to an interference by the authorities
with the applicant’s right to respect for his private life, noting that that
interference was prescribed by domestic law, namely legal texts, namely Article
18 of the Constitution, Article 282 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, section
11 (1) of Organic Law No. 2/1986 of 13 March 1986, and sections 1 and 14 of
Organic Law No. 1/1992, combined with the interpretative case-law of the
Constitutional Court establishing the rule that prior judicial authorisation
was required where an individual’s private life was likely to be infringed,
except in emergencies, in which case subsequent judicial scrutiny was possible.
The Court noted that the impugned interference had pursued the legitimate aim
of ‘prevention of crime’ and ‘protection of the rights of others’, emphasising
that ‘sexual abuse is unquestionably an abhorrent type of wrongdoing, with
debilitating effects on its victims’ and that ‘children and other vulnerable
individuals are entitled to State protection, in the form of effective
deterrence, from such grave types of interference with essential aspects of
their private lives’. But the Court found that the seizure and inspection of
the computer files by the police as effected in the present case had been
disproportionate to the legitimate aims pursued and had therefore not been ‘necessary
in a democratic society’. The Court pointed out that it was difficult, in the
present case, to assess the urgency of the situation requiring the police to
seize the files from Mr Trabajo Rueda’s personal computer and to access their
content, bypassing the normal requirement of prior judicial authorisation,
given that there was no risk that the files would disappear, and that the
computer had been seized and placed in safekeeping by the police and was not
connected to Internet. The Court therefore failed to see why waiting the
relatively short time to secure prior judicial authorisation before examining
Mr Trabajo Rueda’s computer would have impeded the police investigation into
the impugned facts. Consequently, it found a violation of Article 8 of the
Convention.
The Court held, unanimously, that the finding of a violation
in itself constituted sufficient just satisfaction for any non-pecuniary damage
sustained by Mr Trabajo Rueda. Separate opinion Judge Dedov expressed a
separate opinion, which is annexed to the judgment.
Astonishingly, the full judgment is available only in
French.
