European Digital Rights (EDRi) has joined other 42 civil liberties NGOs and professional associations.
EDRI joined them in signing the amicus curiae brief initiated by
German NGO Working Group on Data Retention (Arbeitskreis
Vorratsdatenspeicherung).The action is destined to the European Court
of Justice (ECJ) in relation to the action started on 6 July 2006 –
Ireland vs. Council of the European Union, European Parliament (Case
C-301/06). The brief is asking ECJ to annul the EU directive on data
retention pointing out that apart from the formal grounds put forward
by Ireland, the directive is, most of all, illegal on material grounds.
According to the document, data retention violates the right to
respect for private life and correspondence, freedom of expression and
the right of providers to the protection of their property. "While it
threatens to inflict great damage on society, its potential benefit
appears, overall, to be little. Data retention can support the
protection of individual rights only in few and generally less
important cases. A permanent, negative effect on crime levels is not to
be expected."
With data retention in place, "citizens constantly need to fear that
their communications data may at some point lead to false incrimination
or governmental or private abuse of the data. Because of this, traffic
data retention endangers open communication in the whole of society."
Amicus Curiae Brief (8.04.2008)
List of Signatories of the Amicus Curiae Brief (8.04.2008)
European NGOs ask Court to annul data retention directive (8.04.2008)
EDRi-gram: German constitutional challenge on Data Retention (12.03.2008)
Source: ЕДРи-грам „EDRi joins European NGOs in asking ECJ to annul data retention directive“ 9 април, 2008.
