EU: Evidence for Necessity of Data Retention

On 24 July 2013, the European Commission has published a Document by DG Home dating from March this year and called "Evidence for necessity of data retention in the EU" collating evidence provided to the Commission on the necessity of data retention including case studies from across the EU.

Material

The Document draws together evidence which has been supplied by Member States and Europol in order to demonstrate the value to criminal investigation and prosecution of communications data retained under the Directive 2006/24/EC (the Data Retention Directive or 'DRD').

Content

The Document contains some general context on the role of historical data in various types of investigations, some observations on the available statistics, and a selection of individual case studies which have been provided by Member States. The Commission intends to provide further information on the question of the necessity of data retention.

In this context the evaluation report for the Commission's general evaluation of the Data Retention Directive "Evaluation Report on the Data Retention Directive (Directive 2006/24/EC)", COM(2011)225, is of particular interest which included (section 5.4) a number of the arguments which are developed in this document, along with a few illustrative examples, and other statements including replies to questions from the European Parliament concerning the role of communications data in the investigation and prosecution of the most serious crimes.

"Evidence for necessity of data retention in the EU", DG Home, European Commission, March 2013