Court Rules Logs Seized from F-Secure's VPN Must be Destroyed
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:
Logs Seized From F-Secure's VPN Must Be Destroyed, Court Rules * TorrentFreak:
Back in January 2019, Finland's National Bureau of Investigation (KRP) seized VPN logging data from FREEDOME in response to a legal request from the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt / BKA) in Germany. The BKA was investigating a "serious crime" and traced the perpetrator back to an IP address operated by F-Secure's VPN service.
As reported by YLE, F-Secure filed a request at the district court for the seizure to be overturned and the seized logs destroyed, arguing that the data seized should be classified as confidential communications, which may only be seized in accordance with Chapter 10 of the Secret Coercive Measures Act.
[...] In a May 2019 decision, the district court found in favor of F-Secure, noting that seizing the data would require coercive measures under the Coercive Measures Act. The court also found that F-Secure was not a party to the communications in question but acted as an intermediary, so KRP wasn't able to use coercive measures either.
[...] Unhappy with the decision of the district court and the order to destroy the seized logs, KRP took its case to the Helsinki Court of Appeal.
The appeals court handed down its decision yesterday, upholding the decision of the lower court which ruled that the seizure was illegal and the logs should be destroyed.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.