DRletter
Recipients
- Viviane Reding, European Commission Vice-President in charge of Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, BE-1049 Brussels, Belgium
- Cecilia Malmström, European Commissioner for Home Affairs, BE-1049 Brussels, Belgium
Draft text
Dear Madam,
The EU data retention directive 2006/24 requires telecommunications companies to store data about all of their customers' communications. In order to facilitate criminal investigations, the directive aims at making traceable who communicated with whom by telephone, mobile phone or e-mail. In the case of mobile phone calls and text messages, the respective location of the user is to be recorded as well. In combination with other data, Internet usage is also to be made traceable.
We consider unacceptable so far-reaching a recording of the behaviour of the entire population. With a data retention regime in place, sensitive information about social contacts (including business contacts), movements and the private lives (e.g. contacts with physicians, lawyers, workers councils, psychologists, helplines) of 500 million Europeans is collected in the absence of any suspicion. Telecommunications data retention thus undermines the professional secrecy of lawyers, physicians, clergy, helplines and other professionals, creating the permanent risk of data losses and data abuses and deterring from confidential telecommunications. It undermines the protection of journalistic sources and thus compromises the freedom of the press. Overall it damages preconditions of our open and democratic society. In the absence of a compensation scheme, the enormous costs of a telecommunications data retention regime must be borne by the thousands of affected telecommunications providers. This leads to price increases as well as the discontinuation of services, and indirectly burdens consumers.
Studies prove that the communications data available without data retention is generally sufficient for effective criminal investigations. Blanket data retention has proven to be superfluous, harmful or even unconstitutional in many states across Europe, such as Germany, Austria, Belgium, Greece, Romania and Sweden. These states prosecute crime just as effectively using targeted instruments, such as the internationally agreed Convention on Cybercrime. There is no proof that telecommunications data retention provides for better protection against crime. Instead it costs billions of euros, puts the privacy of innocent people at risk, disrupts confidential communications and paves the way for an ever-increasing mass accumulation of information about the entire population.
Legal experts expect the European Court of Justice to follow the Constitutional Court of Romania as well as the European Court of Human Rights's Marper judgement and declare the retention of telecommunications data in the absence of any suspicion incompatible with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
As representatives of the citizens, the media, professionals and industry we collectively reject the directive on telecommunications data retention. We appeal to you to propose abolishing the EU requirements regarding data retention in favour of a system of expedited preservation and targeted collection of traffic data as agreed in the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime. In doing so, please be assured of our support.
Yours faithfully,