Fiches Belges

In case urgent retention/preservation of data stored in a computer system or on a data carrier is requested, the request will be executed by the police with a previous consent of the competent judicial authority, i.e. public prosecutor in pre-trial proceedings or court in trial proceedings. The retention period is from 60 – 90 days, it can be extended by another 90 days on the basis of a new request. Before this retention period expires, the requesting state must deliver an MLA request / EIO requesting the seizure of such retained data, otherwise the data will be released upon lapse of the retention period. In essence, the procedure for producing electronic evidence is subject to the same rules as tangible evidence, i.e. any item that may serve as evidence in criminal proceedings must be surrendered upon request to the court, public prosecutor or the police, this procedure applies both in pre-trial proceeding, as well as in trial. If the evidence is not surrendered voluntarily, the presiding judge (in trial) or public prosecutor (in pre-trial proceedings) can order its seizure (i.e. removal from possession of its holder by the police). The obligation to produce evidence does not apply to documents which contain information with respect to which producing a testimony is not possible (i.e. classified information or information covered by an obligation of secrecy) unless the person in possession of such document was relieved of the obligation of secrecy.

Directive 2014/41/EU on EIOs (Art. 3); Directive 2014/41/EU on EIOs (Art. 10(2)(e)); EU 2000 MLA Convention, CoE Convention on Cybercrime (2001)

Request for provisional freezing of evidence must be sent to Police Department: Police of the Czech Republic, National Organized Crime Agency, Criminal Police and Investigation Service, Cyber Crime Division is designated 24/7 point of contact according to Article 35 (Budapest Convention on Cybercrime) Address: Police of the Czech Republic National Organized Crime Headquarters Criminal Police and Investigation Service Cybercrime Section P.O. Box 41/NCOZ 156 80 Prague 5 Czech Republic Tel. +420 603 191 510 e-mail: contact@pcr.cz MLA request/EIO (for the purpose of seizing and hand over data) must be submitted to the competent judicial authority, which is: - Pre-trial stage of the proceedings: Regional Public Prosecution Office having territorial jurisdiction according to the seat of the operator or other service provider - Judicial proceedings: Regional Court having territorial jurisdiction according to the seat of the operator or other service provider

EIO – Czech and Slovak. Request under the COE 1959 MLA Convention – translation is not required on the condition of reciprocity.

As implied by Art. 12 of the EIO Directive, if applicable.

It is advisable that the authority of the requesting state that sends this request to the above referred Police authority also provides information on which authority in their state will be issuing EIO or an MLA request in this case. We have no legal definition of the electronic evidence in the Criminal Procedure Code. For the purposes of theory and practice, we define the electronic evidence as any information of informative value important for the criminal proceedings, stored or transmitted in digital form. We also don´t have a legal definition of the categories of the electronic data, except the definition of operational and location data included in the Electronic Communication Code. However, for the needs of practice we define content, traffic and subscribed data. For preservation of data within the Czech Republic we use the Art. 7b of the CPC allowing the LEA to order data preservation at electronic communications service providers. For the needs of international judicial cooperation, we use the Art 65a of the Act on International Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters. In these cases, the LEA requests the preservation of the data with the consent of the judicial authority.