Tidal, ruled to disclose server data for economical investigation, But some data have been deleted.

Mihle · June 30, 2019

This is older news now, but I guess its ok for me to write about it because no one have yet.

If anyone dont know, Tidal is a "Norwegian" music streaming service, that got bought by Jay-Z.

History in this story:
Jay-Z's TIDAL Accused Of Inflating Beyoncé And Yeezy Streaming Numbers

So Norwegian Agency for investigating Economical and environmental crime, Økokrim is investigating Tidal because they suspect gross fraud with manipulating streaming numbers.

They did ransack Tidals headquarters in Oslo 17. December 2018, but their servers was not there, it was in other countries. So Økokrim took them to court to get the server data they wanted.
Tidal appealed to Norwegian supreme court, but they lost.

Quote

- In this case the police downloaded a material stored on a server abroad via a PC and a line from Norway. That's how Norwegian police do it today in many cases. If the Supreme Court were to conclude that this is not a law, it will have great significance for practice, said state prosecutor Henrik Horn in Økokrim to NTB on 10 March

Tidals comment on the high courts ruling:

Quote

- We are disappointed that the fundamental freedom from cross-border intervention is not protected in the Supreme Court's decision. This case was not about Tidal, but about companies' right to protection in the future. Unfortunately we did not win this with. As previously communicated and confirmed by Økokrim, Tidal is not charged or suspected in the case. We will continue to offer our assistance to Økokrim. We are also in the process of sharing further information with Økokrim and hope we are approaching a conclusion of the case.

Later, Tidal have come out and said that some of the data related to the case have been deleted:

Quote

So it now appears that ransacking will not take any place, because the relevant listening data has been deleted. The company writes that the deletion is a consequence of GDPR, but says nothing about when the company deleted the data.

- According to the law, Tidal had to become GDPR compliant by spring 2018. This work began long before the claims in Dagens Næringsliv's articles. We informed Økokrim about this at the beginning of their investigation, says Tidal to DN.

However, according to the newspaper, Tidal knew about the content of the article already three months earlier, in February 2018.

Lawyer Jon Wessel-Aas writes in an email to DN that the GDPR explanation appears as a low credible reason for the deletion.

Oh shit.

Sources:
https://e24.no/digital/tidal/hoeyesterett-tidal-maa-utlevere-serverdata/24591238
https://www.dn.no/musikk/tidal/okokrim/hoyesterett/hoyesterett-okokrim-far-se-tidals-data/2-1-576269
https://www.digi.no/artikler/tidal-har-slettet-strommedata-i-sentrum-for-okokrim-etterforskning/462325

Opinion:
I hope they can do the investigation still and find out what happened, and that people/company get what they deserve. If not for the cheating, for the deletion of the data.

mr moose · July 3, 2019

I think this just highlights how messy the whole situation is with technology, law and crime etc and why we need a much stronger and more concerted effort to bring digital responsibility and legal liability into the 21st century.

Multiple laws and border issues impeding both law and jurisdictional protection and now they are finding ways to use the GDPR as an excuse to delete evidence. What a mess.