Italian Court of Cassation: the defence must be able to know how SkyECC evidence was obtained abroad

On 15 July 2022 the Fourth Criminal Section of the Italian Court of Cassation annulled a Rome review-court order confirming pre-trial detention in a drug-trafficking association case based on SkyECC chats, and remitted the case. The chats came from Europol's access to the SkyECC servers in March 2021 and had been acquired by European Investigation Order. The prosecutor had refused to disclose the Europol documentation and the Carabinieri records, describing them as police information exchanges. The Court held that in both main and precautionary proceedings the court must verify that the acquisition does not conflict with mandatory rules and fundamental principles of Italian law, which requires knowledge of how the data were captured and decrypted. The adversarial principle extends to the methods of acquisition, which also determine whether the texts and the identities of sender and recipient match the originals. The court of remittal must clarify each stage of the acquisition in adversarial proceedings.