MEP Calls For Withdrawal Of Proposed Data Retention Law

by Ulrika Lomas, for LawAndTax-News.com, Brussels

06 May 2005

A draft report submitted to the European Parliament by German Liberal MEP, Alexander Alvaro has challenged the legal basis of the Framework Decision on the retention of telephone and internet data put forward in April 2004 by the United Kingdom, France, Sweden and Ireland.

Under the terms of the proposed measures, providers of communication services would be required to keep certain types of user data for at least a year. In December 2004, the European Council went further, amending the proposed legislation to state that ISPs and other telecoms firms should be required to retain all data "processed/generated by the service provider, even if the data have no interest for the service provider".

However, Mr Alvaro, seeking the withdrawal of the Decision on the grounds that it is incompatible "with the principle of presumption of innocence", argued that the data required to be stored under the measure would amount to the equivalent of "roughly four million kilometres' worth of full files". Searching the data in question would reportedly take between 50 and 100 years.

Business and civil liberties groups have come out in support of the Liberal MEP, arguing that not only are the proposals impractical, but they would prove punitively expensive for telecoms firms and ISPs, and would represent a gross infringement of the civil rights of those customers whose data was retained.

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