Tuul's request was prompted in part by a court case in which Toomas Tamm, Küllike Namm and Kalev Kangur were charged with fraud. Both the district court and, later, the circuit court acquitted the defendants, while the Supreme Court largely upheld those rulings. During the investigation, the ISS obtained the contents of suspect Tamm's email inbox from ISP Telia covering the years 2015 to 2018.

The Supreme Court subsequently ruled that investigative authorities do not have the right, during criminal proceedings, to demand the contents of a suspect's email inbox from a service provider and that such access can only be granted with court authorization.

"I wish to inform you that on June 8, 2026, I submitted a request to the Ministry of the Interior to initiate an internal oversight procedure concerning the ISS (known also by its Estonian acronym KAPO — ed.) in connection with an unlawful and systematic practice revealed by final court rulings, whereby the contents of individuals' email inboxes were obtained from communications and service providers without a legal basis and without court authorization," Kristjan Tuul wrote to ERR on Friday.

According to Tuul, the issue is not limited to a specific court case but concerns suspicions that investigative authorities have been using the same practice for a long time in other proceedings as well.

Ministry recommends turning to the Prosecutor's Office

Tarmo Olgo, head of the Ministry of the Interior's internal audit department, told ERR that the ministry had conducted a thorough review of the request and concluded that it could not carry out an internal oversight procedure.

"In short, the Ministry of the Interior is not the appropriate institution, nor is the minister the appropriate official, to conduct internal oversight aimed at determining the legality and scope of investigative measures carried out in specific criminal proceedings," Olgo said.

At the same time, he acknowledged that the issue raised — the extent to which the confidentiality of communications and the right to privacy may be infringed in criminal proceedings — is undoubtedly significant and concerns an important public interest.

Olgo explained in more detail why the ministry cannot initiate an internal oversight procedure in this matter. "The ISS falls within the Ministry of the Interior's area of responsibility and the minister exercises internal oversight over the legality and expediency of the activities of agencies within that area. However, this authority is not unlimited. Where a separate special procedure has been established to review the legality of a measure, internal oversight is excluded," Olgo said.

"The activity described in the request — an inquiry by the ISS to a service provider seeking the contents of an email inbox — is, by its nature, an investigative measure carried out as part of criminal proceedings. A separate procedure has been established for reviewing the legality of investigative measures in criminal cases, under which the Prosecutor's Office is responsible for such oversight. Consequently, reviewing the legality of these measures falls outside the Ministry of the Interior's authority and the appropriate institution to address the issues raised is the Prosecutor's Office," Olgo explained.

Olgo added that the ministry therefore recommends submitting the matter outlined in the request to the Office of the Prosecutor General, which has the authority, among other things, to assess whether the practice described was systematic and what measures are necessary to prevent it from recurring.

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