Civil society calls for an end to compulsory telecommunications data retention

More than 100 organizations from 23 European countries last week asked EU Commissioners Malmström, Reding and Kroes in a joint letter to “propose the repeal of the EU requirements regarding data retention in favor of a system of expedited preservation and targeted collection of traffic data".

Among the signatories are civil liberties data protection and human rights associations as well as crisis line and emergency call operators, professional associations of journalists, jurists and doctors, trade unions, consumer organizations and industry associations. The EU data retention directive, adopted in 2006, currently compels phone and Internet companies to indiscriminately collect data about all of their customers' communications. According to last week's letter, such generalized data retention puts confidential activity and contacts, for example with journalists, crisis lines and business partners, at risk of disclosure by way of data leaks and abuses. " Blanket data retention has proven to be superfluous, harmful or even unconstitutional in many states across Europe", criticizes the letter.
The letter was signed by the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union. HCLU filed a petition with the Constitutional Court in order to request the ex-post examination for unconstitutionality and the annulment of the data retention provisions of the Act C of 2003 on electronic communications.
 
Click here to read the letter and the list of signatories.

Share

Related articles

Pegasus case: HCLU takes coordinated domestic and foreign legal action

The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) is taking legal action on behalf of six of its clients before the Hungarian authorities, the European Commission, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and in Israel. The organisation aims to expose the practice of unlawful secret surveillance, to have international fora declare that the Hungarian regulation of secret information gathering violates fundamental rights and to prevent politically motivated abuses.

Read more »

NGOs Reject "Safe Harbor 2.0," Urge EU and US to Protect Fundamental Rights

Leading human rights and consumer organizations have issued a letter to urge the US and the EU to protect the fundamental right to privacy.

Read more »

Call for urgent amicus briefs!

In April 2014 the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) declared invalid the Data Retention Directive that unified the rules of the retention of selective data by Internet and telephone services and determined the accessibility of data by authorities in the member states. Despite the content of the judgment, the Hungarian act allowing data retention is still in force. In October, 2014 the HCLU started litigation against two major service providers in order to force the Hungarian Constitutional Court (CC) to repeal the unlawful act.

Read more »