EU Advocate General Says EU Data Retention Directive Unlawful 22
An anonymous reader writes "The Advocate General of the European Court of Justice today issued their opinion that the EU Directive covering the retention of data is incompatible with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. In an interim ruling in a case taken by the Irish Digital Rights movement, the AG found the limitation on a persons right to privacy imposed by the EU Directive was not properly laid down in law. The ECR has yet to make a formal ruling and is not bound by the AG opinion, however it is unusual for the court not to follow suit."
WOW (Score:2)
WOW
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Such privacy, many liberty. Wow. Very data.
Re: (Score:2)
"WOW"
And to be clear; "Wow-wee!"
But I'm unsure if this is the "royal We" or just "I'm having fun like a little girl" "wee!" I'm just taking this into context and I apologize if there has been any misunderstanding.
At this time I'd like to reaffirm that this is a site for geeks about things that matter. And I differ to any English majors who can add to this discussion.
Typical Irish (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Typical Anonymous Coward - blaming the Irish.
helpful, though doesn't mandate the opposite (Score:5, Interesting)
Key to the opinion seems to be that it conflicts with existing EU law to mandate data-retention at the EU level. The opinion however leaves open the possibility that individual member states could choose to adopt data-retention rules in their national law... so it doesn't say that data-retention mandates necessarily conflict with rights guaranteed in Europe, either. One of the things that seems to have particularly discomfited the opinion-writer is that implementing this kind of thing as an EU-wide mandate frustrates the ability of individual member states to issue more narrow mandates that keep data within their borders and have stronger privacy protections.
Re:helpful, though doesn't mandate the opposite (Score:4, Insightful)
One interesting detail is that the European Commission fined Sweden 3 million euro for not implementing the data-retention law in a timely fashion.
If the EU can't mandate data-retention then this fine was erroneous and should be repaid.
Another side effect is that those in power can't blame the EU for their respective data retention law anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I guess that should read, more precisely: The opinion however leaves open the possibility that individual member states could choose to adopt data-retention rules in their national law, unless their national constitution also forbids such a mandate.
Re: (Score:2)
Having a national constitution which makes it impossible to implement a charter does not absolve a member state from implementing the charter.
However, the EU can only apply fines or (maybe, theoretically) throw member states out of the union, and it remains to be seen just how large a fine can be without provoking too much dissent. Probably not very large if it is the UK that gets fined...
Digital Rights Ireland (Score:1)
Irish Digital Rights != Digital Rights Ireland [wikipedia.org]. The latter is the name of the group which have been around for years and took this case. With some editing including dropping the captial D and R the former might have made for a meaningful sentence. As it stands it is like writing USA as American States Union.
Re: (Score:1)
Interim ruling? (Score:2)
I'm not sure that the Advocate General's opinion is properly described as an interim ruling - that suggest a court ruling which has some legal force pending a full trial. The AG's opinion is there to help the court make its decision, but doesn't have any legal force of itself.
As the summary says, its usual for the court to follow the opinion of the AG, but it doesn't always happen.
The Ultimate Privacy Violation (Score:1)
A big deal has been made of the NSA spying on internet users, but in the EU such spying was passed into law in 2006 in the form of the EU Data Retention Directive. They retain data on every website you visit, every email you send, every phone call you make and every text message you send/receive. This information can be accessed without a warrant and it seems access is available to pretty much everyone in the public sector.
What the NSA has been doing in secret, the EU has been doing very publicly for seve