Data retention and telecommunication providers: New EU Parliament meeting

In line with the workshop netCommons organised at the EU Parliament in October, this new event delved into one issue identified last year in an open letter sent to EU institutions by EU Community Networks: the abrogation of blanket data retention obligations. As a reminder, the open letter advocated that:

Community networks strive to  safeguard human rights in communication networks, and in particular the  right to privacy and the confidentiality of communication. While  we welcome recent rulings by the Court of Justice of the European Union  holding that indiscriminate retention of metadata violates the Charter  of Fundamental Rights, we are concerned about several member states’  willingness to circumvent these rulings to protect capabilities for  indiscriminate surveillance. As EU lawmakers start/ARE discussing the  overhaul of the ePrivacy Directive, we call on them to oppose any  blanket data retention obligations and close existing loopholes in EU  law to ensure that only targeted and limited retention obligations can  be imposed on hosting and access providers.