The authorities apparently got tired of asking and just went in themselves.
Canada-based Windscribe, a VPN provider, just said that one of its European servers has been allegedly seized by Dutch authorities without a warrant. According to the company’s post on X, law enforcement said that they will return it to the service provider after they “fully analyze it.” It’s unclear why law enforcement impounded just a single rack from Windscribe’s cabinet, but the VPN provider said that it only uses RAM disk servers, meaning anyone who would look through the installed SSDs would only find a stock Ubuntu install on it, so the servers shouldn’t hold any trackable data.
Whatever they find is inadmissible, if there truly wasn’t a warrant.
Doesn’t mean they can’t use it for parallel construction
Does Dutch/EU law have that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
It’s not a law but a practice that cops do in order to use dubiously acquired evidence to build a case against someone.
Yes but that doesn’t answer the question of whether it’s an accepted practice in the EU. I’m also not so sure it isn’t somehow codified into law, in the US there’s precedents supporting it but IDK about other countries.
The point is that it skirts the law. You can’t really make it illegal because it is a way of subverting legality. If they legally obtain the evidence then it’s legally obtained. If they happened to get to that point through extra-legal means that doesn’t really matter, as long as the end result is legal. Maybe you could argue in court that they only got there because of extra-legal actions, but they can argue the opposite. If this helps them look in the right spot for illegal actions, who’s to say that them looking there couldn’t have happened purely by chance?
You really can make it illegal if there’s the political will to do so, but it’s a hot potato, so the likelihood of of the practice being formally reigned in is unlikely. You make fruit of the poisonous tree absolute and create laws that make illegal search or seizure kill investigations without the possibility of future charges for a given criminal act.
Obviously that would also have practical drawbacks as well, but it is certainly legally possible.
It basically means dodging legal restrictions on investigation by using illegal (or at least inadmissible) means to obtain evidence, and once the police have it, they look for legal ways to get that same information.
So everywhere “has it”, the question is whether they use it. I don’t know if there’s reason to believe that EU police forces use such methods more or less than their US counterparts.
I know what it is, but that doesn’t mean it’s an accepted practice in the EU. I don;t really know much about how their law works, which is why I asked about it.
It’s not an acceptable practice anywhere, but it happens all the time
It definitely is a legally acceptable practice in the US, but I can’t speak to other countries.
this isn’t in US
https://repository.tilburguniversity.edu/bitstreams/97187bcf-4ad2-402c-ac05-e565346d09b6/download
EU has similar laws and Dutch law allows for striking illegally collected evidence if the infringement was severe
The EU doesn’t have laws. It has directives and regulation. These are converted into law by member states.
The EU doesn’t have any regulation or directives about the inadmissibility of evidence; that is a national concern. The only area the EU has directives for regarding evidence is the cross-border admissibility of evidence from one country being accepted in another.
This is in line with the principle of subsidiarity, which means the EU only concerns itself with trans-European issues.
This is technically correct, the best kind of correct.
EU Regulations are directly applicable to all member states, so its not needed to transpose those into domestic law for them to be used. Some countries’ constitutional setup mess with this(like the uk eh pre-brexit I guess), but in general regulations are as important if not more than domestic law.
Directives can be directly used in domestic courts but only under certain conditions. The defendant/respondant needs to be a public body and the transposition deadline must have passed. Its basicly ‘you failed to implement it in time — tough’. Also if they’re not implemented correctly. But in general yes, they’re only instructions for the members to pass domestic legislation.
I think even on a technicality both are law. Sorry if this was a bit padantic.
oh and yes I’m not aware of any EU legislation on admissibility of evidence. But, not really my area :/ I think there have been proposals for cross-border stuff but can’t remember what became of that. If you know any in force i’d be interested in reading that? thanks
Conspiracy brain says this was deliberately done to make any evidence inadmissible and key evidence gathered without a warrant would result in an acquittal with an unlikely second trial for fear of double jeopardy.
Laws exist outside of that country.
The same goes for NL.
deleted by creator