CJEU case C‑178/22 Procura della Repubblica presso il Tribunale di Bolzano – CJEU Judgment (European Union, 2024)

Two complaints were lodged with the Italian Public Prosecutor's office concerning acts of mobile theft. In order to identify the perpetrators, the Public Prosecutor's office requested an authorisation to obtain the telephone records of the stolen telephones from all the telephone companies. These requests concerned all the data in the possession of the telephone companies, with tracking and localisation methods, in particular the users and International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) codes of the devices called or making the calls, the sites visited and reached, the times and durations of the calls and connections, the details of the cells and/or towers concerned, and the users and IMEI code of senders and receivers of SMS and MMS. These requests were made to the judge responsible for preliminary investigations at the District Court, Bolzano (‘Giudice delle indagini preliminari presso il Tribunale di Bolzano’) on the basis of an Italian National law, [https://www.garanteprivacy.it/documents/10160/0/Codice+in+materia+di+protezione+dei+dati+personali+%28Testo+coordinato%29 Article 132(3) of Legislative Decree n°196/2003]. The referring court was uncertain whether [https://www.garanteprivacy.it/documents/10160/0/Codice+in+materia+di+protezione+dei+dati+personali+%28Testo+coordinato%29 Article 132(3) of Legislative Decree n°196/2003] is compatible with [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:02002L0058-20091219 Article 15(1) of Directive 2002/58] (‘ePrivacy Directive’) as interpreted by CJEU, 2 March 2021, Prokuratuur, C-746/18. First, according to paragraph 45 of that judgement, national provisions that allow public authorities to access telephone records containing a set of traffic or location data are justifiable if those provisions are intended for the prosecution of serious offences such as threats to public security and other serious crimes. Second, [https://www.garanteprivacy.it/documents/10160/0/Codice+in+materia+di+protezione+dei+dati+p