European court scraps phone, email data collection law
European court scraps phone, email data collection law
AFP 5 hours ago
Luxembourg (AFP) - Europe's top court on Tuesday struck
down an EU law forcing telecoms operators to store private phone and email data
for up to two years, judging it too invasive, despite its usefulness in
combating terrorism.
By allowing EU governments to access the data, "the
directive interferes in a particularly serious manner with the fundamental rights
to respect for private life and to the protection of personal data," the
European Court of Justice (ECJ) said.
Advocate General Pedro Cruiz Villalon declared the
legislation illegal and told the European Union's 28 member states to take the
necessary steps to withdraw it.
The decision to scupper the 2006 Data Retention Directive
comes as Europe weighs concerns over electronic snooping in the wake of
revelations about systematic US surveillance of email and telephone
communications.
The revelation that US agencies collected data on
millions of European citizens -- and even tapped the phone of German Chancellor
Angela Merkel -- sparked a wave of controversy and prompted lawmakers on both
sides of the Atlantic to rethink their data surveillance laws.
Last month President Barack Obama put forward a
long-awaited plan to end Washington's bulk collection of telephone records,
although critics said the measures should be extended beyond just phone
records.
The court's decision reinforced a general European stance
strongly upholding individuals' rights to privacy, contrasting with a US
position that often supports more invasive policies in the interests of public
security.
The 2006 directive called for EU states to store
individuals' Internet, mobile telephone and text metadata -- the time, date,
duration and destination, but not the content of the communications themselves
-- for six months to two years.
This data could then be accessed by national intelligence
and police agencies.
But the Luxembourg-based ECJ, examining Austrian and
Irish cases, declared the law invalid because it conflicted with the basic
rights to privacy and expectation of personal data being protected.
The court found it "exceeded the limits imposed by
compliance with the principle of proportionality".
The law should be more restrictive, both in terms of what
data are captured and authorities' access to them to ensure that
"interference is actually limited to what is strictly necessary," the
court said.
While it noted the law was useful in fighting serious
crime, it ruled there was insufficient oversight to prevent abuse and ensure
the data's destruction at the end of the retention period
In particular, it said the law's failure to stipulate
that the data must be retained in the EU in order to guarantee it would not be
used for illicit purposes was dangerous.
Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU's commissioner for home affairs
who has been working to reform the directive, said Brussels would carefully
assess the verdict and will adequately respond to the problems raised.
"Welcome clarity brought by the Court of Justice on
the Data Retention Directive, in line with the Commission's critical evaluation
report," she said on Twitter.
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