Le Parlement aura son mot à dire sur la question de la rétention des données

On May 31, 2005, Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding commented: "This is a question of market regulation, it can't be subject to an agreement between governments under the Third Pillar. In the coming days there will be a proposal that Data Retention will be in the First Pillar. We need an impact assessment for the industry. We need the right balance not only in terms of privacy and consumer protection, but also in terms of the market."

EP Rapporteur Alexander Alvaro  has said: "To this date, there is no proof of evidence whether the information collected would give legal authorities an advantage in the fight against terrorism. On one hand we risk infringing European citizens' right to privacy and on the other hand there is a danger of burdening the European telecommunications industry with the high storage costs that the proposal would invariably entail."

Likewise, Michael Bartholomew of ETNO, the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association, said: "We are glad the debate is being reopened again. There is a question of privacy. All of this costs money and nobody has addressed that properly. If you are going to spend hours and hours tracking down data, who is going to pay for it?"

EuroISPA and US ISPA, the respective Internet Service Providers Associations, have urged the EU and other governments "to undertake a serious cost benefit analysis of the impact of applying mandatory data retention requirements before moving forward in this area. This should be accompanied by equally serious analysis and comparison of alternative regulatory approaches, in particular that of 'data preservation'." 

In a Common Statement, Industry Federations UNICE, ICC, EICTA and INTUG have argued: "Mandatory retention (...) is neither economically efficient nor effective for criminal investigation. This coalition, therefore, urges governments to co-ordinate toward a data retention regime based on existing storage of end-user traffic data for legitimate business purposes and to seek advice and opinions from key industry stakeholders. (...) Any traffic data storage requirements imposed by governments should be focused, narrow, government funded, limited to measures absolutely essential to protect society, and should balance the interests of law enforcement agenices, communication service providers, and end-users." 

Bitkom, the German association of the computing industries, has commissioned a 100-page study, whcih comes to the conclusion that "data retention may negatively affect user behaviour, because a loss of acceptance and confidence cannot be excluded. Confidentiality in communications is a precedent, however, for the usage of innovative telecommunication services and in consequence for growth protentials of the ICT industry."

Privacy NGOs like Privacy International and European Digital Rights have attacked the Draft Framework Decision, arguing that it was "invasive, as it involves indiscriminately collecting and retaining information of a highly personal nature (...),  the perceived security gains may be illusory (...),  in contravention with Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights" and introduced on an illegitimate policy process."