The position adopted by the LIBE Committee was largely along the lines of a set of compromise amendments that the rapporteur and the leaders of the two biggest political groups in the LIBE committee had negotiated before (see the voting list containing the outcome of the vote). The amendments touched all of the disputed issues concerning data retention:
Scope: The Council wanted the data to be available for "the prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of serious criminal offences, such as terrorism and organised crime." A majority of the LIBE committee considered this definition to be too open and refers instead to "criminal offences, as referred to in Article 2 (2) of Council Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA" on "the European arrest warrant and the surrender procedures between Member States". A more far-reaching amendment form the Green/EFA group that aimed at exluding non-capital crimes from this list, was voted down.
Privacy safeguards: LIBE adopted an amendment "to ensure that the rights to the respect for private life and to the protection of personal data in the access and use of these data are fully respected". The committee clarifies that the provisions of Article 17 of the directive on data protection and of Articles 4 and 5 of the directive on data protection in electronic communications apply.
Period of retention: The Commission draft defines only a minimum storage period of 6 months for internet data and 12 months for al other data. The Committee wnat s to leav it up to the member states to decide how long the data shall be stored within a time frame of 6 to 12 months, but demands that the data be erased thereafter.
Types of data: While Article 4 of the Commission draft lists categories of data to be retained defined only by the needs of law enforcement agencies, the Parliament committee wants to add a precise list of the data to be retained. It explicitly excludes all data revealing the content of a communication. An oral amendment by the PPE-DE group to include internet e-mail and internet telephony was not not accepted but will certainly be presented in written form for the vote in plenary. LIBE unanimously deleted a provision allowing for an intransparent comitology procedure to add new categories to the list of data to be retained.
Competent authorities: LIBE adopted unanimously an amendment that limits use of the stored data to "the judicial authorities and national authorities responsible for the investigation, detection and prosecution of serious criminal offences".
Costs: Other than the Council, the Commission wants to reimburse operators for "demonstrated additional costs". LIBE wants to include "the demonstrated additional costs of data protection and any future amendments to it" and "costs arising from making the retained data available to competent national authorities" into this scheme.
Unsuccessful connection attempts: LIBE wants to limit the storage obligation to data concerning communications that have actually taken place. Member states would however be authorised to derogate from this provision.
Storage obligation: LIBE voted for an amendment saying that only "that provider who has offered the respective used electronic communication service" needs to store the data, which means that companies running internet servers that serve merely for passing on data streams would not have to store all the data that goes through them. This would create a huge amount of redundant data. LIBE also wants to exclude operators of not publicly available networks (comapny virtual intranets for example) from the storage obligation
Judicial authorities: LIBE has clarified that "the approval of the judicial authorities" is necessary for the provision of retained data, independently of what a member state's law tradition says on the competence in such cases.
Access to the retained data: LIBE wants to limit access to "specified, explicit and legitimate purposes by competent national authorities" in a pre-defined process. The committee asks that the "data requested must be necessary relevant and proportionnal in relation to the purposes for which they were accessed". It wants to exclude usage of the data by the communication service providers as well as further processing of the data and passing it on to third parties by the authorities. For better controllability, it requires a data processing register that would allow later-on to find out who required what data and did what it.
Data safety: LIBE requires that "the data shall be in a form which allows data subjects to be identified only for aslong as is necessary for the purpose for which the data were collected or processed further" and that "the confidentiality and integrity of the data shall be safeguarded [...]".
Defence rights: LIBE asks that "persons against whom proceedings are brought with a view to imposing sanctions have effective rights of defence and appeal."
Evaluation: LIBE wants to oblige member states to provide statistical data allowing to assess how useful the data storage obligation is. Governments are also to set up independent monitoring authorities to assess the impact of the legislation, whcih shall be made publicly available.
Revision: A vast majority of the Committee voted to revise the directive avery three years. The rapporteur would have favoured a 'sunset clause' of five years, but didn't find a sufficent majority for this amendment.
