The protection of personal data in the context of law enforcement: recent case law of the European Court of Human Rights

The article discusses recent judgments of the European Court of Human Rights on the collection of personal data for preventing, detecting or investigating criminal offences. The article delves into three national frameworks permitting the police to process, for a period or indefinitely, several categories of data in respect of persons who were suspected of the offences of varying gravity and were (not) convicted of them. It transpires from the case law that the States’ margin of appreciation (i) was narrowed for indefinite processing of a convicted person’s DNA profile, (ii) was not overstepped on account of processing – for several years – a non-convicted person’s less sensitive data, where the decision-making was based on that person’s previous criminal convictions and where the law contained adequate safeguards. © 2021, @ ERA.