The Respondent's Preliminary Application to the Foreign Company
- According to the Respondent (as stated in paragraph 16 of the appeal quoted above), Tether's "voluntary" response to its request of May 19, 2025 granted it control of the wallet and the tokens therein, and therefore the judicial order of May 20, 2025 granted it the authority to seize the object, the wallet, in the sense that it would not be possible to make any use of it and its assets without its authorization for 180 days from the date of seizure.
- As stated above, according to its wording, the order issued by the court is not an order authorizing the Israel Police to seize the account that was transferred to it "voluntarily", but rather an order instructing Tether to freeze the account itself, and to act in accordance with the operative instructions detailed in the order, i.e., to transfer it to the control of the Israel Police
Moreover, no 'explicit authorization' was presented, by virtue of which an Israeli court could issue an order authorizing the Israel Police to seize a foreign bank account managed in a foreign country by a foreign corporation that has no representation in Israel.
- However, even the Respondent's preliminary application to Tether was not presented as a source of authority in the Law or by virtue thereof.
There is no dispute that the Israel Police, like any administrative body, is entitled to act only by virtue of explicit authorization in the law, and only within the framework of the law. This is the case in general, and in particular in actions that directly infringe on a person's basic rights, including searching his tools and seizing his property.
- A clear and binding expression of these words is found in the words of the Honorable Justice Dorit Beinisch regarding the search of a person's belongings (Criminal Appeals Authority 10141/09 Ben Haim v. State of Israel (March 6, 2012), para. 22; emphasis added):
"A search by a police officer is carried out by virtue of his governmental powers and requires compliance with the standards set out in the provisions of administrative law and the Criminal Procedure Laws, which determine the scope of the powers of the police officers and the conditions for the exercise of these powers (as detailed in paragraph 16 above). The principle regarding the legality of the administration, which has been established since time immemorial in our legal system, states that an administrative authority (and in this regard, a single police officer is also an administrative authority) has only those powers prescribed by law, and it is not permitted to act without such authority (see: Y. Zamir, The Administrative Authority (2nd ed., vol. 1, 2010), 73-82). The importance of the principle of the legality of the administration is even more valid when it comes to powers that permit the administrative authority to infringe on protected human rights, and certainly so when it comes to the powers of a police officer who is authorized within the framework of his powers and in appropriate circumstances to infringe on a person's most basic rights..."
- Regarding the relationship between the violation of human rights and the necessity of explicit authorization, correct things were also written (High Court of Justice 10203/03 The National Census in the Tax Appeal v. the Attorney General (August 20, 2008), paragraph 13 of the opinion of the Honorable Justice D. Beinisch):
"The more the violated right is closely related to human dignity and liberty and is of high social importance, and the greater the intensity of the violation of the right, the more strictly we interpret the requirement of 'explicit authorization' in the circumstances of the concrete case."
- The negative effect of exceeding the boundaries of authority was ruled in another matter (Criminal Appeal 9878/09 State of Israel v. Musa (September 20, 2010), para. 29):
"An action by Israel Police officers that is outside the bounds of the law and in a manner that is inappropriate for human dignity and rights is liable to seriously harm the functioning of the police and the public's trust in it."
- The Respondent did not dispute this, but argued that the source of the authority for her application in the "voluntary" track is in section 3 of the Police Ordinance. In this regard, she referred to the Supreme Court's ruling in the matter of a "voluntary enforcement mechanism", according to which the Cyber Unit of the State Attorney's Office usually turns to social platforms that operate online in the manner prescribed in their procedures ("Notice and Removal"), so that they remove, at their discretion, publications that violate Israeli law (HCJ 7846/19 Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel v. State Attorney's Office, Cyber Unit (April 1, 2021)).
Without going into the various layers of this central judgment, the state's position that turning to a social platform to remove publications is a "voluntary act" that does not require authorization by virtue of the law was rejected (paragraph 45 of the opinion of the Honorable Justice Hanan Meltzer):