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29th Mar 2024

Data-retention moves worry MEPs

MEPs remain worried by plans to force EU telephone and service providers to store data for criminal investigations, despite fresh assurances from the UK presidency.

Member states are currently debating measures that could be adopted in October via intergovernmental agreement, shutting the European Parliament out of the decision-making process.

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In parallel, the European Commission aims to present its own directive on the subject on 21 September under the co-decision procedure, which involves full parliamentary participation.

"We can't say yet if the council will do it under pillar one [co-decision] or pillar three [intergovermental]", UK presidency criminal matters working group chairman Simon Watkin told the parliament's civil liberties committee on Monday (5 September).

Details of the member states' proposal will be ironed out by working groups in Brussels next week.

But Mr Watkin revealed that current ideas tend toward retention for six to 12 months, covering the traffic patterns but not the content of telephone calls, SMSs and emails.

The moves have been in the pipeline for over a year, but were given added impetus by the 7 July London bombings.

Reassurances given

London police special operations veteran David Johnson gave the committee several examples of how limited mobile phone data access has already been used to help solve murders and kidnappings in the UK.

Mr Johnson made an emotional appeal using graphic details of a victim who had been so badly burned and beaten that "the skin was almost coming off his face".

Meanwhile, Mr Watkin reassured industry that the authorities would help companies to meet any "reasonable" costs arising from the scheme.

He promised that a major new study into the effectiveness and viability of the measures by UK home secretary Charles Clarke would be made available to MEPs on Tuesday.

The presidency envoy also said that people in crime-hit areas, such as inner-city Birmingham in the UK, understand the need for the new rules and embrace the retention system.

"This is important. It makes a difference to people's lives, to justice being done", he said.

MEPs threaten court action

But the appeal failed to win over sceptics from the liberal and left-leaning parliamentary groups, with civil liberties committee data retention rapporteur Alexander Nuno Alvaro saying that the matter could end up in court.

"We need an effective trialogue, where the European Parliament is on side and on board rather than having to take the matter to the European Court of Justice to have its rights upheld", he remarked.

Socialist MEP Martine Roure likened the member states' high-handedness on data retention to the inability to produce a persuasive constitution, saying citizens would feel alienated if their fears over loss of privacy are not addressed.

Dutch socialist member Edith Mastenbroek pointed to recent research showing how pooled medical data can be accessed and altered by hackers.

And liberal member Bill Newton Dunn said the data scheme would not be effective in combating eastern European criminal gangs based outside the EU.

Another UK presidency expert admitted that a debate is still ongoing as to whether the storage and searching of such vast amounts of data is technologically possible.

He also conceded that while the UK has high standards when it comes to data protection, there are no provisions for standardising data protection levels across the 25 member states in tandem with the data retention programme.

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