European Data Detention

I write my column Who's Watching? in TCS Daily on 23 August 2005.

The dangers of data retention

Data retention used to be about fighting organised crime, cybercrime, and tax evasion. But since the 9/11 attacks it become a focus of the War on Terror. Sweden, together with France, the UK and Ireland, submitted a far-reaching and costly proposal regarding the mandatory retention of communication data for 3 years. The proposal will reveal who has been calling, faxing, SMS-ing and e-mailing whom, what websites people have visited and even where they were with their mobile phones (although the contents would not be retained). Telephone companies and internet service providers would be ordered to store all traffic data of their customers. Police and intelligence agencies in Europe would have access to it.

Critics have argued that this is a severe infraction of human rights, revoking the Data Protection Directives and the European Convention on Human Rights, since every European would be put under scrutiny whether they are suspected of a crime or not.

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