The Data Retention Directive (Directive 2006/24/EC), a directive, later declared invalid by the European Court of Justice, was at first passed on 15 March 2006 and regulated
data retention, where data has been generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks. It amended the
Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications. According to the Data Retention Directive,
EU member states
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...
had to store information on all citizens' telecommunications data (phone and internet connections) for a minimum of six months and at most twenty-four months, to be delivered on demand to police authorities.
Under the directive, the police and security agencies would have been able to request access to details such as
IP addresses
An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...
and time of use of every
email
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...
, phone call and text message sent or received. There was no provision in the directive that permission to access the data must be confirmed by a court. On 8 April 2014, the
Court of Justice of the European Union declared the Directive invalid in response to a case brought by
Digital Rights Ireland against the Irish authorities and others because blanket data collection violated the
EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, in particular the right of
privacy
Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively.
The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of ...
enshrined in Article 8(1).
History
In September 2005, during the United Kingdom's
presidency of the European Council
The president of the European Council is the person presiding over and driving forward the work of the European Council on the world stage. This institution comprises the college of heads of state or government of EU member states as well as ...
, a plenary session was held concerning the retention of
telecommunications
Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that ...
data, chaired by the UK's
Home Secretary
The secretary of state for the Home Department, otherwise known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom. The home secretary leads the Home Office, and is responsible for all nationa ...
. This led to an agreement reached by the Council at its meeting on the 1 and 2 December that was then adopted in March 2006, under the Austrian presidency.
Implementation
Romania
The EU directive has been transposed into
Romanian law The law of Romania is civil law.
History
The Romanian judicial system experienced a major overhaul in the early 2010s, with the introduction of four new codes: the Civil Code (2011), the Civil Procedure Code (2013) and the Penal and Penal Proced ...
as well, initially as Law 298/2008. However, the
Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR) subsequently struck down the law in 2009 as violating constitutional rights. The court held that the transposing act violated the constitutional rights of privacy, of confidentiality in communications, and of free speech. The
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...
subsequently sued Romania in 2011 for non-implementation, threatening Romania with a fine of 30,000 euros per day.
The Romanian parliament passed a new law in 2012, which was signed by president
Traian Băsescu
Traian Băsescu (; born 4 November 1951) is a conservative Romanian politician who served as President of Romania from 2004 to 2014. Prior to his presidency, Băsescu served as Romanian Minister of Transport on multiple occasions between 1991 ...
in June. The Law 82/2012 has been nicknamed "the
Big Brother law" (using the untranslated English expression) by various Romanian non-governmental organisations opposing it, as well as the Romanian media.
On 8 July 2014 this law too was declared unconstitutional by the CCR.
Criticism
The Data Retention Directive had sparked serious concerns from physicians, journalists, privacy and human rights groups, unions, IT security firms and legal experts.
Annullment
On 8 April 2014, in the landmark ''Digital Rights Ireland and Ors'' case, the Court of Justice of the European Union declared the Directive 2006/24/EC invalid for violating fundamental rights. The Council's Legal Services have been reported to have stated in closed session that paragraph 59 of the European Court of Justice's ruling "suggests that general and blanket data retention is no longer possible".
A legal opinion funded by the
Greens–European Free Alliance
The Greens/European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA) is a political group of the European Parliament composed primarily of green and regionalist political parties.
Formed following the 1999 European elections for the 5th European Parliament, th ...
in the
European Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the Legislature, legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven Institutions of the European Union, institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and in ...
found that the blanket retention of data of unsuspicious persons generally violates the
EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, both in regard to national telecommunications data retention laws and to similar EU data retention schemes (
Passenger name records, Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme, Terrorist Finance Tracking System, law enforcement access to the
Entry-Exit-System,
Eurodac
European Dactyloscopy (Eurodac) is the European Union (EU) fingerprint database for identifying asylum seekers and irregular border-crossers. After the European Parliament approved the last EURODAC reform poposed by far-right party Vox (December 2 ...
,
Visa Information System).
[Boehm/Cole]
Data Retention after the Judgement of the Court of Justice of the European Union
.
See also
*
Data Protection Directive
*
Telecommunications data retention Data retention defines the policies of persistent data and records management for meeting legal and business data archival requirements. Although sometimes interchangeable, it is not to be confused with the Data Protection Act 1998.
The differen ...
References
External links
Text of the directive and national provisions on data retention communicated by the member states (HTML and PDF)
{{Authority control
European Union data protection law
European Union directives
2006 in law
2006 in the European Union