12 PREZHDAROVI v. BULGARIA JUDGMENT personal information and requesting their return. The Court observes that the scope of a search-and-seizure operation is a relevant factor to be taken into account when deciding whether the impugned measure met the requirements of Article 8 (see Iliya Stefanov, cited above, § 38). The Court cannot speculate on the existence of personal information on the computers but notes that on no occasion did the domestic authorities take account of the applicants’ complaint in this connection: the court that approved the measure did not consider the scope of the operation and did not make a distinction between information which had been necessary for the investigation and information which had not been relevant; during the investigation the applicants requested the return of the computers, arguing that they contained personal information, but neither the prosecutor nor the relevant courts scrutinised that assertion (see paragraphs 22-24 above). While the Court accepts that, as a matter of principle, the retention of the computers for the duration of the criminal proceedings pursues the legitimate aim of securing physical evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation (see, mutatis mutandis, Atanasov and Ovcharov v. Bulgaria, no. 61596/00, § 70, 17 January 2008), the lack of any consideration of the relevance of the seized information for the investigation and of the applicants’ complaint regarding the personal character of some of the information stored on the computers rendered the judicial review formalistic and deprived the applicants of sufficient safeguards against abuse. 50. In conclusion, the Court finds that the lack of clear rules regarding the scope of the judicial review in such a situation, combined with the lack of any meaningful review of the lawfulness of and the justification for the measure, rendered the post factum judicial review ineffective for the purposes of the protection of the applicants’ rights as guaranteed by Article 8 of the Convention. Moreover, while it is true, as the Government pointed out, that the applicants did not enter any objections in the search-and-seizure record, such an omission on their part did not relieve the domestic court from its obligation to provide a meaningful judicial scrutiny of the search and seizure, especially when subsequently the applicants made numerous complaints concerning the personal character of parts of the retained information. Therefore the Government’s objection for non-exhaustion of domestic remedies must be rejected. 51. Bearing in mind the above, the Court is of the view that even assuming that there exists a general legal basis in Bulgarian law for the impugned measure, the applicants in the present case were not offered sufficient guarantees for their right to respect for their private life before or after the search-and-seizure operation (see Gutsanovi, cited above, § 226). In these circumstances the Court finds that the interference with the applicants’ right to respect for their private life was not “in accordance with the law” as required by Article 8 § 2 of the Convention. Consequently, the