Council pressures Parliament on data retention

The UK Presidency  says the retention of data is necessary to combat terrorism. At the same time, the Presidency insists on storing the data also to prosecute other unspecified crimes. 

A Council note on the 12 October Justice and Home Affairs Council reads: "In the next stage, the Framework Decision will remain on the table as an option favoured by a large number of delegations. However, a majority of delegations were also open to the idea of adopting a Directive. There was wide agreement that any measure must reflect the elements referred to in the Presidency paper, notably in respect of the provisions on retention periods, scope and costs." 

Parliament rapporteur Alexander Alvaro  sees the proposal in the greater context of the Parliament's gaining a right of codecision on justice and home affairs matters: "We cannot let the opportunity pass to create a precedence, which would guarantee that the European Parliament will in future participate in the most important domestic policy decisions. Yet we must remain clear about the fact that the final compromise mustn't result in political horse-trading. Party leaders today confirmed that the committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs remains in charge of negotiations with Commission and Council. The goal we are aiming for is to reach a sustainable compromise by December. Council should at the same time handle important issues of policy in justice and home affairs by co-decision, where Parliament merely has consultation rights so far. This would constitute a democratic quantum leap in the European Union." 

A number of industry associations - among them AmChamEU - have called for e-mail to be exempt from the storage obligation: "Many of the largest email services are provided via the Internet. While many email service providers are in the United States, these services are available from providers in any country in the world. The vast majority of such public services are subsidised by advertising, and therefore, there are few if any checks on the veracity of personal data provided by users when registering for such a service. In other words, it would be entirely trivial for a user to mask their identity or avoid services that would be subject to the proposed retention obligations. By contrast, large global companies with private email networks that are connected to the global Internet for business purposes may be deterred by the privacy implications of a retention scheme that targets retention of email traffic data." 

Civil society groups and and privacy advocates say data retention is "invasive, illegal, illusory and illegitimate". A petition signed by more than 56,000 people reads: "Data retention is an invasive tool that interferes with the private lives of everyone. Retaining personal data on everyone is an illegal practice in terms of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as it is disproportionate. Security gained from retention may be illusory, as it is likely that traffic data that is associated to one individual may actually be linked to activity taken by another, or by a process that is unrelated to the activities of that user. The means through which this policy is being pursued is illegitimate, as some member states who have failed to pass this policy through their own Parliaments are now trying to push it through the EU instead in the name of harmonisation and international cooperation."