FC: Europe set to nix Bush request, not require ISP data retention

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Politech message from Sunday:

"E.U. weighs ordering ISPs to retain traffic, with Bush's support"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-02779.html

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Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 08:11:27 -0500
To: declan () well com
From: Marc Rotenberg <rotenberg () epic org>
Subject: FYI - NYT on Data Retention, NGO letter

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/technology/13NET.html

NEW YORK TIMES
November 13, 2001

European Union Set to Vote on Data Law

By PAUL MELLER

BRUSSELS, Nov. 12 - European Union lawmakers are expected to ignore
a request by the Bush administration to revise a data-protection law
they are drafting to allow the authorities greater access to
information about telephone calls and Internet messages.

Last month, President Bush sent a list of 47 measures he wanted
Europe to take to assist in the war on terrorism. His requests came
in response to an offer of help from the acting president of the
European Union, Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium, and
Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission, the union's
executive branch, during a visit to the White House soon after the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

President Bush asked the union to revise a draft directive on data
protection for telecommunications, to be voted on in the European
Parliament on Tuesday, "to permit the retention of critical data for
a reasonable period," he said in a letter written by James J.
Foster, the deputy chief of the United States mission to the union.

The existing wording of the directive said that information about
times and durations of phone calls and the transmission of e-mail
messages should not be retained by telecommunications companies and
Internet service providers any longer than necessary for billing
purposes.

Marjory Van den Broeke, a spokeswoman for the European Parliament,
said today that President Bush's request for the revision "was not
mentioned once" during a short debate this evening before the vote
on Tuesday afternoon. She declined to comment further on the
request.

She said the European Parliament was expected to move in the
opposite direction and strengthen the privacy codes about data
retention. The lawmakers have adopted amendments that would limit
the circumstances under which data could be kept beyond the required
time needed for billing purposes.

The draft of the directive written by the European Commission says
that retention of data beyond the billing time should be
"appropriate." The Parliament members are expected to add that
longer data retention should be allowed only where it is
"proportionate and limited in time," Ms. Van den Broeke said.

[...] 




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