The European Union (EU) denied yesterday it was to introduce proposals to make companies store records of private e-mails, faxes and phone calls.
British-based group Statewatch said this week the EU was working on rules to force telephone firms and Internet service providers to store data such as the source or time of a communication from one to two years for criminal investigations.
Denmark, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said so far it was only consulting member states on how to bring their rules on data retention into line with each other and that in-depth guidelines were not being considered.
"There are no further proposals on the table regarding retention of traffic data and the Danish presidency is not engaged in drafting any such proposals," Denmark said.
Statewatch had claimed the EU was considering detailed proposals drawn up by Belgium that would force telecoms firms to hang on to traffic such as e-mails, faxes and normal phone calls for anything from 12 to 24 months.
It also said Denmark was pushing on with this work and that the rules would be compulsory for all member states. Statewatch said that based on what it called the leaked Belgian proposal, the rules had "grave gaps in civil liberties protection".
The group said these included the fact that there were limits over what data could be exchanged, no reference to supervisory authorities on data protection and no reference to individuals' rights to correct, delete or block data. AFP