As a result of society’s increasing digitisation, the police have ever more opportunities to collect, investigate and combine huge amounts of personal data using advanced technology. However, the current legal framework is, as yet, ill-equipped to deal with this new reality. Commissioned by the WODC, this study examines the legal safeguards in criminal justice data collection in relation to the legal safeguards governing the processing of these data. To this end, the requirements and safeguards imposed by European law on the processing of data for law enforcement purposes are inventoried here. Inspiration is drawn from experience with the Dutch Intelligence and Security Services Act 2017 and Belgian, German and Norwegian law. This study provides tools that legislators can use to reconsider the methods of standardisation and legal regulation design to better protect citizens' privacy.
November 2022: This research was completed on 15 July 2022; the websites listed in footnotes were accessible on that date. In this second corrected edition, a textual change has been made in footnote 537 (and the associated sentence). This correction in no way affects the results of the study.
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