The applicant is a national of Afghanistan who requested asylum in Germany, without presenting a valid passport or a passport substitute. As proof of identity, the applicant submitted among others, an identity document without biometric data, issued by the Afghan authorities and a marriage certificate. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) asked the applicant to hand over the mobile phone and to communicate access data. BAMF analysed the data on the applicant's mobile phone as part of the asylum procedure. The applicant challenged this policy and the case was presented before the Berlin Administrative Court, which held that the evaluation of mobile phones by BAMF to determine the identity and nationality of an asylum applicant within the meaning of Section 15 (2) No. 6 AsylG constitutes an interference with the fundamental right to guarantee the confidentiality and integrity of information technology systems and that measures such as the evaluation of submitted documents, the implementation of register comparisons, inquiries from other authorities or inquiries from language analysts constitute milder means that should be used by the authorities. The Berlin Administrative Court also held that BAMF was not entitled to read the applicant's data from the mobile phone and to evaluate it using software, to save the result report generated from the evaluation of the applicant's mobile phone, to release the result report for the applicant's asylum procedure and to base the decision on the asylum application on that respective report.

The judgment was appealed before the Federal Administrative Court of Leipzig, which ruled on 16 February 2023.

The Federal Administrative Court confirmed the judgment of the Administrative Court and rejected the appeal lodged by BAMF. It held that the evaluation of digital data from mobile carriers to determine the identity and nationality of an asylum applicant is not lawful in the absence of sufficient consideration of other available knowledge and documents and it is only permitted if the purpose of the measure, based on the time it was ordered, cannot be achieved by less severe means. It noted that according to the findings of the administrative court, more lenient means were available to be used by the Federal Office (such as marriage certificate, register comparisons and inquiries about linguistic abnormalities) to obtain further evidence to determine identity and nationality. According to the court, this proved that the request addressed to applicant to share their access data for the evaluation of their mobile phone was disproportionate and therefore illegal.