October season of illicit evidence in the Federal Supreme Court’s garden?
Just a few days after the discontinuation of the Dashcam ruling decision, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court overturned a Thurgau judgment on the grounds that the conviction was based on illegal evidence. The ruling is 6B_908/2018 of October 7, 2019.
It’s the RVS: Automated Vehicle Searchand Traffic Monitoring.
The RVS system, which can be fixed or mobile, uses a camera to determine the license plate or the identity of the vehicle’s owner. But RVS also records the time, place and direction of travel, as well as the vehicle’s occupants. Once this data has been collected and stored, it is merged with other databases and automatically compared. This process enables the simultaneous serial processing of complex data records in fractions of a second.
In this case, recordings from the RVS had been used by the prosecuting authorities as evidence to convict a motorist of unauthorized driving.
As the motorist contested this conviction, the Federal Court considered whether such recordings could be used as evidence.
For the Federal Court, obtaining data from the RVS that can be used to identify motorists is not in itself problematic:“Die Erhebung von Daten bewegt sich damit grundsätzlich im Rahmen einer konventionellen Identitätsfeststellung, was für sich allein noch keinen schweren Eingriff in das Recht auf persönliche Freiheit“.
On the other hand, the combination of recordings from the RVS with data collected elsewhere can form the basis of personality and movement profiles and infringe fundamental rights: “Namentlich die Kombination mit anderweitig erhobenen Daten und eine entsprechende Streuweite des Systems können Grundlage für Persönlichkeits- oder Bewegungsprofile bilden. Dabei gilt es zu berücksichtigen, dass der weder anlassbezogen noch aufgrund eines konkreten Verdachts erfolgte Eingriff in die Grundrechte eine abschreckende Wirkung zeitigen kann“.
In addition, RVS can have a dissuasive effect and be accompanied by a feeling of surveillance that can considerably hinder self-determination: “Die Möglichkeit einer späteren (geheimen) Verwendung durch die Behörden und das damit einhergehende Gefühl der Überwachung können die Selbstbestimmung wesentlich hemmen“.
Similarly, such surveillance carries the risk that the persons concerned may be wrongly suspected of being involved in a crime.
In the special case of the canton of Thurgau, 829444 license plates were registered in the first few months after the RVS went live. This resulted in 3262 positive results, which had to be corrected due to various sources of error (e.g. interpretation errors, etc.). In all, 166 cases are said to have given rise to “police action”. This represents a considerable error rate. These correlations underline the fact that ‘in terms of individual freedoms, RVS is not a low-intensity intervention, but rather a severe one.
This is why, from the point of view of the Federal Court, RVS constitutes a serious infringement of the right to informational self-determination guaranteed by art. 13 al. 2 Cst.
However, according to Art. 36 al. 1 Cst, serious infringements of fundamental rights require a clear and explicit legal basis in a formal law. Effective protection of the right to informational self-determination therefore requires that the intended use, scope of collection, storage and deletion of data be sufficiently defined.
However, this was not the case with the Thurgau Police Act, which did not allow road users to anticipate what information would be collected, stored, linked and compared with other databases, and which did not include any obligation to delete data immediately and without trace, if no match was found when the data was compared.
The Thurgau Police Act was therefore not a sufficient legal basis to justify the infringement of the right to informational self-determination. Consequently, the resulting recordings are to be considered as unlawful evidence within the meaning of art. 141 CPP (Code of Criminal Procedure), even if the evidence has been collected as part of the police’s a priori preventive activities and not as part of its judicial police prerogatives. In this regard, the Federal Court clarifies its case law:
“Stellt die Polizei im Rahmen ihrer präventiven Kontrolltätigkeit allerdings strafbare Handlungen fest, nimmt sie kriminalpolizeiliche Aufgaben wahr (vgl. auch § 1 Abs. 2 und § 15 Abs. 1 PolG/TG). In diesen Fällen ermittelt die Polizei nach Art. 306 ff. StPO, wobei sie gemäss Art. 306 Abs. 2 beds. a StPO namentlich Spuren und Beweise sicherzustellen und auszuwerten hat (BGE 141 IV 417 E. 2.3 S. 420 f.). Urkunden und andere Aufzeichnungen gelten als sachliche Beweismittel (Art. 100 Abs. 1 lit. b und Art. 192 Abs. 2 StPO). Auch wenn sie im Rahmen der präventivpolizeilichen Tätigkeit erhoben werden, sind die Beweisverbotsregelungen der StPO zu beachten. Andernfalls wäre die Sammlung von Beweisen ausserhalb der strafprozessualen Regeln ins Belieben oder zur freien Disposition der Behörden gestellt (SABINE GLESS, in: Basler Kommentar, Schweizerische Strafprozessordnung, 2. Aufl. 2014, N. 38 f. zu Art. 141 StPO; differenzierend auch LUKAS BÜRGE, Polizeiliche Ermittlung und Untersuchung, 2018, S. 81 ff.). In dieser Hinsicht folgt auch der Rechtsweg den vom Strafprozessrecht vorgegebenen Grundsätzen ( BGE 136 I 87 E. 3.4 S. 93 f.). Insoweit bedarf die erwähnte Rechtsprechung einer Präzisierung“.
And as seen in the Dashcam case, illicit evidence can only be used to prosecute serious offences – crimes – which is not the case for driving without authorization.
What’s next for the prosecuting authorities?
Turn to the cantonal legislator to enact a law that satisfies the conditions of art. 36 para. 1 Cst. In particular, the law will have to inform road users about the nature of the information collected, stored and linked together or compared with other databases. The law will also have to regulate how such data is stored and destroyed, and provide for the obligation to delete data immediately and without trace when no match is found when data is compared.
