Abstract

Pursuant to the Study on Legal Frameworks for Hacking by Law Enforcement, commissioned by the European Parliament at the request of the LIBE Committee and published in March 2017, the cur-rent is the 'golden age of surveillance'. Thanks to the hacking tools, law enforcement agencies can acquire more personal data than they could ever previously. Considered that hacking practices can negatively affect the enjoyment of the right to privacy and personal data protection, the paper examines the LIBE Study, focusing on the requirements that domestic legislations in this field should comply with pursuant to the jurisprudence developed by the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice. In this context, the paper deals also with two further issues examined by the LIBE Study: the cooperation of service providers with law enforcement agencies and the international trade of hacking tools.