Europe's Top Court Chalks Up More Strikes Against Bulk Data Retention
upstart writes:
Europe's top court chalks up more strikes against bulk data retention:
Yet more strikes against general and indiscriminate data retention in the EU: The bloc's top court has issued a couple of rulings on joined cases today - one related to a German law on telecoms data retention which had been challenged by Deutsche Telekom and ISP SpaceNet; and another finding fault with the French state's blanket retention of telecoms data which had been challenged after it was used by a financial services regulator in an insider trading case.
"The Court of Justice confirms that EU law precludes the general and indiscriminate retention of traffic and location data, except in the case of a serious threat to national security," the Court writes in a press release on its judgement on the German case referral - which finds the national data retention law seriously interferes with the fundamental rights of people whose data is retained, confirming its previous case-law.
"The general and indiscriminate retention of traffic data by operators providing electronic communications services for a year from the date on which they were recorded is not authorised, as a preventive measure, for the purpose of combating market abuse offences including insider dealing," the CJEU writes in a second press release, on the French referral.
Its ruling there also upholds existing case-law that essentially means EU Member States can't (or, well, shouldn't) deploy creative workarounds to (try to) avoid a CJEU declaration that a national law requiring general and indiscriminate retention of telecoms data is invalid under EU law.
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