CYBERSPACE/EU – A leaked draft of the European Directive on data retention has revealed that the European Union authorities will ask that all communications records be held for a minimum of 6 months.The directive, which was made public by the European Digital Rights organization, seeks to standardize the type, amount and period of time communications service providers will be required to store details about their customers’ communications. The information stored will include customer phone call history, emails, IMs, faxes and a variety of other electronic communications, including details on the locations of mobile phone calls.

Although the data held will not include the actual content of the calls or emails, the information will be sufficient for law enforcement agents to identify the sender and recipient, as well as the location of the caller in the case of mobile phones.

The EU concedes that the directive constitutes a “limited invasion of privacy” and “limited impact on the competitiveness of the electronic communications industry,” but the European Commission characterized the measures as “urgent” and necessary to facilitate the “prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution” of criminals and terrorists.

Several civil liberties and human rights groups have united together to oppose the mandatory data retention, however, and have called for the EC to drop the plan. In their petition to the EC, the groups assert that “no research has been conducted anywhere in Europe that supports the need and necessity of creating such a large-scale database containing such sensitive data for the purpose of fighting crime and terrorism.”

The European Parliament reached a similar conclusion last month, and issued a report questioning the necessity and efficacy of a similar data retention proposal put forth by four EU member states. The EP’s report voiced “sizeable doubts concerning the choice of legal basis and proportionality of the measures,” and said that such data retention would impose “enormous burdens” on the telecommunications industry. The EP projected the costs to be $217 million for initial expenses, and $60.5 a year in continuing costs, per firm.