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On 2 May 2007 a new technical platform for the interception of traffic data in all types of communication systems was discretly put into operation by the French Ministry of Interior, covering communication data related to text messages, mobile or Internet.

The security services are now in the position of knowing who has contacted whom, when and where and, by a simple click, they can obtain from the telephone operators the list of all calls from and to a subscriber. They can obtain the subscription documents of the respective person with address and bank information and can also require all the Internet sites or forum addresses the respective person has accessed.

The authorised services may require such kind of information from Uclat

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The UK Home Office is presently implementing the Data Retention Directive that will oblige telephony and internet service providers to keep data for 12 months. The decision was taken without any debate by simple "affirmative" votes in the parliament and the Directive is to be implemented by 15 September 2007 for fixed and mobile telephones and 18 months later for internet services (including VOIP telephony).

The Home Office intents to implement the Directive by a Regulation that will replace the current "voluntary" Code and does not seem to have taken into consideration any risk related to the privacy of personal data.

Moreover, the government says that the EC Directive covering serious crime

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A first draft law for the implementation of the data retention directive was presented at the end of April 2007 by the Romanian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology for public consultation. The ministry also organized on 26 April a public debate on the draft law.

The first draft was achieved in cooperation with a number of public bodies including the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Internal Affairs or the Romanian Data Protection Authority.

The text proposing a 12-month period of traffic data retention, without any explanatory reports, has received criticism from ISPs and other telecom operators that believe it puts a high financial burden on them. The draft

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The German government has approved the draft legislation that implements the data retention directive, but the political opposition and the growing anti-surveillance movement shows an important resistance to the new plans of the federal Minister for the interior, Wolfgang Schäuble, who wants an ever increased surveillance.

The draft bill adopted by the German Government on 18 April 2007, was called by the Minister of Justice, Brigitte Zypries, "reasonable and constitutional." But the adopted draft expands what was initially proposed by Zypres, making traffic data accessible not only for criminal prosecution purposes, but also in order to "prevent considerable dangers" and "fulfil the legal duties" of all security police. Zypries also stated

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The French Government, during this election period, is preparing a decree for the application of the law on the confidence in the numerical economy (LCEN) of 21 June 2004, which requires webmasters, hosting companies, fixed and mobile telephony operators and Internet service providers to retain all information and on Internet users and telephone subscribers and to deliver it to the police or the State at a simple request.

The present text requires the data retention for a year, and according to the digital rights associations, such as EDRI-member IRIS, this goes even further up to retaining the passwords supplied when subscribing to a telephone service or an Internet account or payment details such as amount,

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Mikael Odenberg, the Swedish defence minister presented on 8 March 2007 a draft law to the parliament that would give the national defence intelligence agency the power to monitor all cross-border phone calls and email traffic without court order.

The proposal, which according to the government, is meant to combat terrorism and other threats to national security, would allow the National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) to use computer software to search for sensitive keywords in all cross-border phone and e-mail communications.

Although the Government states that this would affect only a small part of the electronic communications and that communication exchanged between

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A new normative act regarding the competence of the Prosecutors dealing with terrorism and organized crime adopted by the Romanian Government in the last days of 2006 created rumours among the press and civil society that accused the Ministry of Justice of breaching the citizens privacy.

The new act (Emergency Government Ordinance 131/2006) was adopted in the last government meeting in 2006, without any public debate on the new provisions being introduced. The Ordinance entered into force on 1 January 2007 and gave more powers to the Prosecutors Department for Investigations on Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT).

According to the press and civil society groups, the new law would allow

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The Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) has made a strong case against the Dutch draft law regarding the implementation of the data retention directive. In its advice of 22 January 2007 the DPA comes to the conclusion that the draft disregards the requirements of article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the fundamental right to respect for one’s private life.

The draft introduces a retention period of 18 months, both for telephone and Internet traffic data. The arguments for this almost maximal retention period are mostly borrowed from a report of the Dutch Erasmus University of 22 June 2005, about which EDRI-gram previously reported.

This report was the first public research in Europe into the actual use