Top EU court overturns data retention directive

[Second Summer]

The mass storage of telecommunications data for potential investigation is illegal and breaches privacy rights, according to the EU's top court. The ruling overturns a 2006 EU directive designed to assist prosecutors.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) on Tuesday overturned a controversial EU directive that allowed telephone and email providers to store private citizens' data en masse for scrutiny by investigators in later cases of serious crime.

The Luxembourg-based court ruled that the directive - passed by bloc's Council of Ministers in 2006, after terrorist attacks in London and Madrid - amounted to a grave intrusion into the private lives of citizens in the 28-nation bloc.

Full article: Top EU court overturns data retention directive (Deutsche Welle, 8. April 2014)

The directive said member states needed to store citizens' telecommunications data for 6-24 months, including who you have called or emailed, and when, and where you were when you called or emailed this person. Also, when and where you logged on to the Internet, both from computers and mobile phones. Basically, it's the kind of metadata the NSA in the US is famous for collecting in vast quantities.

The opposition to this directive has been strong in several European countries. If you judge by the length of the corresponding Wikipedia article, the opposition was strongest in Norway

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive (English)
http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datalagringsdirektivet (Norwegian bokmål)