The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on Tuesday confirmed the illegality of the “general and indiscriminate” retention of traffic or location data, but allows for “selective and/or rapid” retention in the fight against serious crime.
In a ruling on Tuesday, to allay the doubts of the German Supreme Court, the ECJ allows exceptions for the general retention of internet metadata “in the event of a serious threat to national security”.
The CJEU also considers that EU law “with a view to ensuring national security, combating serious crime and preventing serious threats to public security, selective storage of traffic and location data defined, on the basis of objective and non-discriminatory elements, according to the categories of persons concerned or by a geographical criterion, for a period limited to what is strictly necessary, but may be extended”.
The generalized and undifferentiated storage of IP addresses, on the other hand, is allowed, as well as – for the purpose of fighting crime and ensuring public security – “general and undifferentiated storage of data related to the civil identity of users of electronics” .
In Portugal, the Constitutional Court (TC) ruled in April over unconstitutional rules of the metadata law that require telephone and internet service providers to retain data related to customer communications – including origin, destination, date and time, type of equipment and location – for a period of one year, for possible use in criminal investigations.
To respond to this ruling, a proposal for a government bill was presented, such as the PSD, Chega and PCP laws on the same subject, which were discussed without a vote in the specialty on June 3.
The president of the republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, has already said he will ask the TC for a preventive inspection of the new law that will be passed by parliament.
Source: DN
