The Austrian Arbeitskreis Vorratsdaten (Working Group against Data Retention Austria – AKVorrat.at) handed over a petition to the Austrian Parliament on December 14, 2011, asking for the government to be obliged to engage against the Data Retention Directive at the EU level and to evaluate the whole set of existing anti-terror legislation.

Six years after the Data Retention Directive passed the European Parliament, but only a few months after it was transposed into the national law, the activists of AKVorrat presented the petition together with 4.471 Signatures to the vice-director of the Austrian Parliament, Susanne Janistyn.

The Austrian Parliament has only recently introduced the possibility to sign petitions online on its website, after they have been successfully submitted on paper. Therefore, today’s event in the Parliament only marks a mid-term goal for AKVorrat. Starting form Monday next week a broad online campaign will be launched to reach the goal of 10 000 signatures online. Austrian citizens starting from the age of 16 are entitled to sign petitions on the Parliament’s website.

While data retention is the most prominent issue of the campaign, the petition also targets the countless number of laws implemented with the argument of fighting terrorism. Therefore, the Austrian Parliament is asked to evaluate all of these laws and to abolish them, if they are found not to be proportionate or necessary in a democratic society.

Only in April this year the Data Retention Directive was transposed into the national Austrian law, which will come into force on 1 April 2012. From this date on, Austrian citizens will have the opportunity to file complaints against this law with the Constitutional Court of Austria. AKVorrat is committed to use this opportunity extensively.

Source: EDRI-gram „Austria: Petition against Data Retention Directive“ Number 9.24, December 14, 2011