Legal summary

November 2022

Glättli and Others v. Switzerland (communicated case) - 47351/18

Article 8

Article 8-1

Respect for correspondence

Respect for private life

Six-month compulsory retention of telecommunication metadata imposed on service providers: communicated

The applicants, in their various capacities – politicians, journalists or data-protection campaigners –, criticise the legal obligation imposed on telecommunications service providers to retain data which could identify users, and also traffic and payment data, for a period of six months (section 15 (3) of the Federal Act on surveillance of postal correspondence and telecommunications [ LSCPT ], as in force until February 2018).

In February 2014 they asked the relevant authorities to order their telecommunications service providers to delete their data and to refrain from any future retention of their data and from transmitting the latter to any authority, but this request was refused. Their subsequent appeals were dismissed by the Federal Administrative Court (judgment A-4941/2014 ) and by the Federal Supreme Court (judgment 144 I 126 ; see also the press release ).

The applicants submit that this retention of data was disproportionate and enabled a profile to be established, against which the Swiss legal system did not provide any remedy and which prevented them from expressing themselves freely through telecommunications and from meeting freely.

Case communicated under Articles 8, 10, 11 and 13 of the Convention.

(See also, on the same subject, the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union; as a recent example, see the judgment in SpaceNet and Telekom Deutschland (Grand Chamber, cases C-793/19 and C-794/19 , 20 September 2022))

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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