News 

Telecoms firms and ISPs usually store details for billing purposes for a maximum of three months but several countries, most notably the UK, have pressed for compulsory retention of records for much longer as part of the fight against terrorism and organised crime.

Alexander Alvaro, the German MEP who is charged with getting the bill through parliament, believes that the committee's two-thirds majority in its favour should see it pass the full vote next month.

'Everything that makes this directive proportionate and balanced is now in, especially concerning the limitation of data types, limitation on storage period, safeguards on access and sanctions,' he said.

Should parliament vote yes, the bill will then have to be approved by the member states, with the UK, which currently holds the EU presidency, pushing for this to happen before the end of the year.

Civil liberties campaigners remain resolutely opposed to the new laws, described by EDRI, a pan-European organisation of 21 civil rights and privacy campaign

ADVERTISEMENT

groups, as 'a serious violation of the right to a private life and a serious endangerment to freedom of speech'.

The Open Rights Group (ORG), a UK digital rights group, has warned that a coalition of record companies and movie studios are pressing for a last minute change to the bill that will enable content providers to use the data to 'fish for file-sharing networks, DRM workarounds, and spurious patent infringers'.

The ORG says that the Creative Media and Business Alliance (CBMA), which counts Sony BMG, Disney, EMI and Universal among its members, persuaded Liberal Democrat MEP Bill Newton Dunn to remove a reference to 'serious criminal offences' from the proposals so that the stored data can be used to investigate, detect and prosecute any criminal offence. As a result the new laws could be used, for example, to pursue anyone who posts details of anti-DRM hacks on the Web, as this is now considered a criminal offence under the terms of the EU Copyright Directive.

The ORG also warns that once IPRED2 - the EU directive on criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights - has been passed the data retention provisions will also enable the identification of p2p file sharers.

The CBMA has emailed all MEPs urging them to back the change.

The ORG says that what the CMBA proposes will give it 'unparalleled powers of investigation, provided at the taxpayer's expense'.

'Whether or not you agree with the need to retain traffic data for fighting terrorism and serious crime, there can be no benefit to national security from allowing the creative industries to use this information for prosecuting simple "infringement" cases,' it says.