(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

A spokesman of the Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology has confirmed that due to the flood of responses to the law proposal there is no way to have data retention ready before the deadline set by the directive.

The ministry received a total of 90 statements from various organisations. Most of them voiced severe concerns about the suggested implementation of data retention. The supporters were various bodies of the entertainment industry, demanding longer retention periods and a lower threshold. They demanded extending access to retained data for violations of copyright, by a law that is being implemented to help fight terrorism.

The ministry needs to process all those statements in a diligent way and it will do so, even if the EU issues a caution against the Republic of Austria. Furthermore there have been talks with the Ministry of Justice to embed data retention in the criminal law concerning the degree of penalty and periods. The criminal law has already exemptions for lawyers, physicians, journalists and other groups of society handling highly sensitive personal data. The retention period of six months both for telephone and Internet traffic data was not questioned. More results of these talks will be due in autumn after the summer break.

The background to this turnaround is that a general aversion against data retention has been growing in Austria, and the resistance is pretty broad. Hardly anybody turns up in Austrian public to express support for this measure. The Austrian Chambers of Commerce and Labour both oppose data retention. Those bodies, called "social partnership", are the pillars of real political life representing small and middle businesses (Conservatives) and Labour. Even the federal Chancellor's office expressed concerns about a possible violation of Austria's constitution. Various academic institutions stepped in as well. All quoted bodies are more or less closely related to one of the two big political parties. The discussion here started very late, as it took print and TV media journalists quite a long time to understand what data retention of network traffic data could mean for their jobs in general. During the month of June the topic was covered by all Austrian media - late, but better than never.

AT: Data Retention gets delayed until autumn (only in German, 28.06.2007)
http://www.quintessenz.org/d/000100003888

Quintessenz doqubase about data retention
http://quintessenz.org/data_retention

The Truth about the Costs for Data Retention (only in German, 29.06.2007)
http://futurezone.orf.at/it/stories/203760/

Data Retention Delayed (only in German, 28.06.2007)
http://futurezone.orf.at/it/stories/203295/

Data Retention in Austria arrives later (only in German, 28.06.2007)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/result.xhtml?url=/newsticker/meldung/91...

(Contribution by EDRI-member quintessenz.org - Austria)