27/07/2023, 22:38 CURIA - Documents 93 Unlike crime, even particularly serious crime, a threat to national security must be genuine and present, or, at the very least, foreseeable, which presupposes that sufficiently concrete circumstances have arisen to be able to justify a generalised and indiscriminate measure of retention of traffic and location data for a limited period of time. Such a threat is therefore distinguishable, by its nature, its seriousness, and the specific nature of the circumstances of which it is constituted, from the general and permanent risk of the occurrence of tensions or disturbances, even of a serious nature, that affect public security, or from that of serious criminal offences being committed (judgment of 5 April 2022, Commissioner of An Garda Síochána and Others, C‑140/20, EU:C:2022:258, paragraph 62 and the case-law cited). 94 Thus, crime, even of a particularly serious nature, cannot be treated in the same way as a threat to national security. To treat those situations in the same way would be likely to create an intermediate category between national security and public security for the purpose of applying to the latter the requirements inherent in the former (judgment of 5 April 2022, Commissioner of An Garda Síochána and Others, C‑140/20, EU:C:2022:258, paragraph 63). The measures providing for targeted retention, expedited retention or retention of IP addresses 95 Several governments, including the French Government, submit that only general and indiscriminate retention enables the efficient achievement of the objectives pursued by the retention measures and the German Government has argued, in essence, that that conclusion is not undermined by the fact that the Member States may have recourse to the targeted retention and expedited retention measures referred to in paragraph 75 above. 96 In that regard, it must be observed, in the first place, that the effectiveness of criminal proceedings generally depends not on a single means of investigation but on all the means of investigation available to the competent national authorities for those purposes (judgment of 5 April 2022, Commissioner of An Garda Síochána and Others, C‑140/20, EU:C:2022:258, paragraph 69). 97 In the second place, Article 15(1) of Directive 2002/58, read in the light of Articles 7, 8 and 11 and Article 52(1) of the Charter, as interpreted by the case-law recalled in paragraph 75 above, allows Member States to adopt, for the purposes of combating serious crime and preventing serious threats to public security, not only measures for targeted retention and expedited retention, but also measures providing for the general and indiscriminate retention, first, of data relating to the civil identity of users of electronic communications systems and, secondly, of IP addresses assigned to the source of a connection (judgment of 5 April 2022, Commissioner of An Garda Síochána and Others, C‑140/20, EU:C:2022:258, paragraph 70). 98 In that respect, it is common ground that retention of data relating to the civil identity of users of electronic communications systems may contribute to the fight against serious crime to the extent that those data make it possible to identify persons who have used those means in the context of planning or committing an act constituting serious crime (judgment of 5 April 2022, Commissioner of An Garda Síochána and Others, C‑140/20, EU:C:2022:258, paragraph 71). 99 Directive 2002/58 does not preclude, for the purposes of combating crime in general, the generalised retention of data relating to civil identity. In those circumstances, it must be stated that neither the directive nor any other EU law act precludes national legislation, which has the purpose of combating serious crime, pursuant to which the purchase of a means of electronic communication, such as a prepaid SIM card, is subject to a check of official documents establishing the purchaser’s identity and the registration, by the seller, of that information, with the seller being required, should the case arise, to give access to that information to the competent national authorities (judgment of 5 April 2022, Commissioner of An Garda Síochána and Others, C‑140/20, EU:C:2022:258, paragraph 72). 100 In addition, it should be recalled that the generalised retention of IP addresses of the source of connection constitutes a serious interference in the fundamental rights enshrined in Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter as those IP addresses may allow precise conclusions to be drawn concerning the private life of the user of the means of electronic communication concerned and may be a deterrent to the exercise of freedom of expression guaranteed in Article 11 of the Charter. However, as regards such retention, the Court has held that in order to strike the necessary balance between the rights and interests at issue as required by the case-law referred to in paragraphs 65 to 68 above, it is necessary to take into account, https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document_print.jsf;jsessionid=A4432EEFFE3535A201E714AE6441EE66?mode=DOC&pageIndex=1&docid=265881… 20/28