Top European Court to Review National Data Retention Laws

Today, the Court of Justice for the European Union will hear challenges to the data retention laws of the UK, Belgium, and France. The Court previously invalidated European and national data retention laws that required companies to retain communications data for law enforcement purposes. The Court said the laws were a "particularly serious" interference with the right to privacy. The new challenges, brought by civil society organizations, contend that European national laws fail to comply with the earlier rulings. EPIC recently urged the FCC to repeal a similar regulation that requires the retention of US telephone records, following an earlier petition to the agency. When the FCC docketed the EPIC petition for public comment, every comment received supported an end to the data retention regulation.