Article 29 Data Protection Working Party has adopted its opinion on data retention directive as adopted by the Council on 21 February 2006, pointing out major criticism to the adoption and to the present text agreed by the Parliament.

The Working Party recalls its previous concerns and reservations expressed in its last Opinion 113 of 21 October 2005 on the then draft Directive. The decision to retain communication data for the purpose of combating serious crime was considered as an unprecedented one that may endanger the fundamental values and freedoms all European citizens.

The privacy experts consider of utmost importance that the Directive is implemented and accompanied in each Member State by measures protecting privacy. The Directive leaves room for interpretation and therefore adequate and specific safeguards are necessary to protect the vital interests of the individual, mainly the right to confidentiality when using publicly available electronic communications services.

The Working Party also thinks the provisions of the Directive should be interpreted and implemented in a harmonised way and proposes a uniform, European-wide implementation of the Directive that would respect the highest level possible of personal data protection. This should also be done in order to reduce the considerable costs borne by the service providers when complying with the Directive.

Article 29 is suggesting that the member states should implement adequate safeguards at least on Purpose specification, Access limitation, Data minimization, Data mining, Judicial/ independent scrutiny of authorized access, Retention purposes of providers, System separation and Security measures.

The data retention directive is heavily criticized also by other privacy authorities. Peter Hustinx, the European data protection supervisor considered the lawmakers had not protected the privacy of Europeans. His opinion is that "The data retention directive - turned the rules upside down. We were not very pleased with that - we still think there is too little in terms of safeguards."

Hustinx also stated: "I believe that politicians, people - you, I, everyone else - have to be aware of the real threats. At the same time, that is not going to justify disproportionate solutions - it is going to hurt the texture of trust and confidence... I think we have reached a point that more and more people start wondering whether legislation is getting excessive and that is a good thing. We have to build in safeguards and keep asking the question of 'is this necessary?'"

Opinion 3/2006 on the Directive 2006/XX/EC on the retention of data processed in connection with the provision of public electronic communication services (25.03.2006)
http://europa.eu.int/comm/justice_home/fsj/privacy/docs/wpdocs/2006/wp...

Tech must not invade privacy, says EU data protection head (7.04.2006)
http://www.silicon.com/0,39024729,39157943,00.htm

EDRI-gram : Opinion EU privacy authorities on data retention (17.11.2004)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number2.22/dataretention

EDRI-gram : Renewed rejection of data retention by European institutions (5.10.2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.20/retention