Human Rights Update

Legal professional privilege: Search and seizure of electronic data

The complaint in Wieser and Bicos Beteiligungen GmbH v Austria (App no 74336/01) [2007] ECHR 815 related to the search and seizure of electronic data, which was obtained in breach of procedural safeguards protecting lawyers’ professional secrecy provided under national legislation. The applicants are a limited liability company and its owner and general manager, who is a lawyer.

Relying on the European Convention on Human Rights, Art 8 (the right to respect for private and family life) the applicants complained that the search and seizure of material from the general manager’s office amounted to an interference with the right to correspondence. During a criminal investigation into illegal trade in medicine, police officers conducted a search in the presence of one of the applicants and a representative of the Salzburg Bar Association.

- One group of officers searched for hard copies of files. When the applicant objected to the examination of a document, it was sealed