CLOSED Call for Action – EDRI and Privacy International campaign against mandatory data retention

The EU plans the wide-spread retention of personal data resulting from communications, or so-called traffic data. We argue that any such retention is necessarily a hazardously invasive act. With the progress of technology, this data is well beyond being simple logs of who we’ve called and when we called them. Traffic data can now be used to create a map of human associations and more importantly, a map of human activity and intention.

As technologies become more invasive, and as laws are increasingly reluctant to protect individual rights, the European Union should be fulfilling its role to uphold the rights of individuals. Data retention is an invasive and illegal practice with illusory benefits. Privacy International and EDRI have prepared a joint response to the European Commission consultation on a Framework Decision on Data Retention. We invite any other organisations and individuals to endorse before the __deadline__, which is __September 15, 2004__, the response, which can be found at http://www.privacyinternational.org/issues/terrorism/rpt/responsetoretention.html.