On 9 September 2025 the Dutch Supreme Court (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1247) delivered a judgment in a case involving participation in a drug trafficking organization, the sale and possession of cocaine and money laundering. The central issue was whether the police could examine the suspect’s smartphones without prior authorization from the investigating judge. The Court of Appeal had ruled that the general powers in the Dutch Code of Criminal Procedure were sufficient because no complete picture of the suspect’s private life had been obtained.
The Supreme Court disagreed with that reasoning. Referring to its earlier ruling of 18 March 2025 and the European Court of Justice’s Landeck judgment, it stressed that examining smartphones will often constitute more than a minor intrusion into private life. In such circumstances prior judicial authorization is required unless there is a properly justified urgent situation. The Supreme Court found that the Court of Appeal had not sufficiently explained why no such authorization was necessary in this case.
As a result, the judgment of the Court of Appeal was partially overturned, limited to the part of the case concerning the drugs charges and the sentence, and the matter was sent back for retrial. For the rest the appeal was dismissed. The decision underscores that smartphones contain highly sensitive personal information and that legal safeguards, rather than technological possibilities, must guide digital investigations.
Photo by Paul-Alain Hunt on Unsplash
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