Ljubljana District Court excludes SkyECC data: mass surveillance violates the constitutional privacy of communications

By order of 2 December 2022 the District Court of Ljubljana excluded from the file the SkyECC data obtained from France by European Investigation Order, together with nine police reports derived from them, in proceedings against 16 defendants for money laundering (Art. 245 KZ-1) and drug trafficking (Art. 186 KZ-1). The court accepted that the EIO was formally valid and that French judicial orders existed, but noted that the manner in which the SkyECC content had been obtained was never explained. Applying the Slovenian Constitutional Court's standard in U-I-144/19, it found that the operation resembled mass rather than targeted surveillance, as it covered all phones of the service, and referred to Big Brother Watch v. United Kingdom. Slovenian constitutional guarantees apply once foreign evidence enters domestic proceedings, and the use and further processing of the data violated Article 37 of the Constitution (privacy of communications).