ECJ strikes down Europe's digital surveillance law

Flemish opposition party Groen has called for the repeal of Belgium’s law on telecommunications data, after a ruling from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg yesterday. The ECJ said that an EU law, in force since 2006, obliging telecommunications companies to stock information on emails and telephone calls was in breach of the right to privacy.

Until yesterday, the EU’s Data Retention Directive forced telecommunications companies to store what is known as meta-data – the details of digital communications, including the phone numbers of both caller and recipient, duration of a call and email addresses but not the actual content of the conversation – for up to two years. Meta-data had to be stored, according to the law “for the prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of serious crime, such as, in particular, organised crime and terrorism”.

There were two challenges to the law: one from Ireland and one from Austria. The courts asked the ECJ to examine the validity of the directive, and the court has now said it is in breach of EU treaty.

The EJC stated that the Data Retention Directive made no distinction among people. Rather, it “applies even to persons for whom there is no evidence capable of suggesting that their conduct might have a link, even an indirect or remote one, with serious crime”.

“Groen warned before the passing of this law that it was an attack on privacy,” said the party’s fraction leader in parliament, Stefaan Van Hecke, in response to the ruling. “Fortunately, there are still European institutions prepared to guarantee privacy. The government should repeal this law as soon as possible.”

Internet service providers, meanwhile, called on the government for clarity on the impact of the ECJ’s ruling for Belgium. The Internet Service Provider Association said that its members have invested heavily in equipment to allow them to meet the demands of the law and store the massive quantities of data involved.