Lawyers in Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro Question Sky ECC Data Legality

Data from the SKY ECC communications app, seized in a French and Dutch-led police operation, cannot be legally used in criminal proceedings, lawyers from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro concluded in a debate in Belgrade.

At the event, on Thursday, headlined "SKY ECC communication as evidence in criminal proceedings", organised by the Bar Association of Serbia, lawyers and law professors debated whether data from this communication, although useful in criminal proceeding, can be used as legally obtained evidence.

Belgrade University Law Faculty Professor Vanja Bajovic said that besides privacy issues, using Sky ECC communications in criminal proceedings in Serbia could violate the right to a fair trial.

"If the defendant's right to privacy is violated, if the evidence was obtained through [cracking] Sky, the defendant cannot know the source of the evidence or the way in which the evidence was obtained," she said.

Bajovic said information based on Sky ECC could be use as intelligence data, based on which police and prosecutors can later build a case, but not as the evidence itself.

"Failures of the police and prosecutor's office cannot be 'washed' by the destruction of human rights," she added.

Miodrag Stojanovic, a lawyer from Bosnia, said the judiciary there has been facing cases related to Sky ECC since November 2022.

According to him, people were arrested, put in custody and indicted based on Sky ECC communications without a court decision on whether thisx was legally obtained evidence or not.

"The question is at what point the judicial community of Bosnia and Herzegovina willl have the strength to weigh its final decision related to the legality of the evidence," Stojanovic said,

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