By Jo Best, 29 September 2005 17:00
NEWS The European parliament has rejected a call by some countries, including the UK, to retain details on all calls, texts and emails for three years.
The proposal, put forward by France, Ireland, Sweden and the UK, demanded the data retention proposals to combat terrorism. The European parliament, however, decided the measures were unlikely to achieve that aim and were a threat to civil liberties.
The parliament said of the ruling: "MEPs want the rules to be proportional to any threat and for the parliament to have an equal say with national government in this area."
The parliament, however, did give its backing to a separate proposal by the European Union. which calls for data to be stored for a shorter period.
However, the EU's proposal has also attracted criticism for its impact on European citizens' privacy.
The European Data Protection Supervisor, Peter Hustinx, said earlier this week that the plans are disproportionate and possibly illegal.
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1. David
I cannot for the life of me work out precisely who might be required to retain this communications data.
Is it anyone who runs an SMTP server connected to the Internet, whether they are an ISP (whatever that is) or any other kind of business?
Clearly it would cover the likes of Pipex, Wanadoo, BT, any UK-based instance of America OnLine and so on, but what about small companies with 5 employees who have their own SMTP server inhouse? What about individuals who have their own SMTP server?