Data retention for one year for UK telecom companies

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The transposition into the UK law of most part of the EU Data Retention
Directive (2006/24/EC) was approved on 24 July 2007 by the House of Lords
and signed the next day by the Home Secretary.

The approval followed after a period of public consultation proposed by a
paper published by the Home Office in March 2007.

As a result of the public consultation, the law applies only to telecom
companies that will have to preserve phone call logs for one year, but does
not apply to Internet traffic data such as emails, web surfing or VoIP phone
calls.

The new law is meant to provide security services with a reliable log of
mobile and fixed phone calls they could use in investigations, referring
only to the records of their occurrence and not their content. It is also
intended to ensure an even approach within the industry.

During the consultation period, the telecom industry considered that the
collection of Internet data was too complicated to be included in the
current rules, the ISP Association stating “the draft regulations as they
stand would not enable implementation of the internet aspects of the
Directive”.

According to the conclusions of the consultation, the implementation of the
Regulations was inappropriate for Internet data due to “particular technical
and resourcing issues” such as “increased difficulties in replicating the
‘end to end’ picture of communications data, the difference in the cost
profile for storage and retrieval of Internet communications and the need
for a strong business case, if the retention period for IP data is set at 12
months.”

The Regulations will come into force on 1 October 2007. Although the data
retention is not yet applicable to Internet traffic data in UK, the
possibility still exists in the future. The EU Directive allows the member
states to postpone the implementaion of the rules to Internet data until 15
March 2009.

Data retention law passed in UK (27.07.2007)
http://www.out-law.com//default.aspx?page=8332

Draft Statutory Instrument 2007 No. The Data Retention (EC Directive)
Regulations 2007
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2007/draft/20077449.htm

The Initial Transposition of Directive 2006/24/EC Government Responses to
the Consultation (June 2007)
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/consult-cover-europe-direct/consult-europe-responses-2007?view=Binary

A consultation paper, – The initial transposition of Directive 2006/24/EC
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/consult-cover-europe-direct/cons-eur-dir-comm.pdf