EDRi joins European NGOs in asking ECJ to annul data retention directive

By EDRi · April 9, 2008

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

European Digital Rights (EDRi) has joined other 42 civil liberties NGOs and
professional associations in signing the amicus curiae brief initiated by
German NGO Working Group on Data Retention (Arbeitskreis
Vorratsdatenspeicherung).

The action is destined to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in relation to
the action started on 6 July 2006 – Ireland vs. Council of the European
Union, European Parliament (Case C-301/06). The brief is asking ECJ to annul
the EU directive on data retention pointing out that apart from the formal
grounds put forward by Ireland, the directive is, most of all, illegal on
material grounds.

According to the document, data retention violates the right to respect for
private life and correspondence, freedom of expression and the right of
providers to the protection of their property. “While it threatens to
inflict great damage on society, its potential benefit appears, overall, to
be little. Data retention can support the protection of individual rights
only in few and generally less important cases. A permanent, negative effect
on crime levels is not to be expected.”

With data retention in place, “citizens constantly need to fear that their
communications data may at some point lead to false incrimination or
governmental or private abuse of the data. Because of this, traffic data
retention endangers open communication in the whole of society.”

Amicus Curiae Brief (8.04.2008)
http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/images/data_retention_brief_08-04-2008.pdf

List of Signatories of the Amicus Curiae Brief (8.04.2008)
http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/216/79/lang,en/#Signatories

European NGOs ask Court to annul data retention directive (8.04.2008)
http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/216/79/lang,en/

EDRi-gram: German constitutional challenge on Data Retention (12.03.2008)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.5/germany-data-retention