Germany, Romania taken to task over data retention.

• Position: COMPLIANCE - Brief article

After years of inaction by Germany and Romania, the European Commission has given the countries a deadline by which they must implement the European Union's (EU) Data Retention Directive.

According to IDG News, the EU's chief regulator has ordered the two countries to take action to ensure compliance with the data retention law. However, Germany and Romania's national constitutional courts have issued rulings blocking national laws enforcing the law.

The directive requires telecom companies to retain data identifying the user, recipient, date, type, location of the equipment, and time and duration of all e-mail, phone, and text communications. The information must be accessible to national police on a case-by-case basis. In 2010, the average European's traffic and location data was logged in a telecom database once every six minutes, according to European Digital Rights (EDRi).

Despite German and Romanian courts' judgments that certain aspects of the implementation of the directive are unconstitutional, they did not rule that the Data Retention Directive itself is...