The law, the Communications Data Bill, will implement the
remainder of the European Union's Data Retention Directive.
Last October the Government enacted regulations which said that
telcos must keep records of phone calls to and from land lines and
mobile telephones. That requirement will be extended to records of
customers' internet usage, email usage and voice over internet
protocol (VoIP) records.
“The aim of the [Directive] is to ensure that certain data is
retained to enable public authorities to undertake their lawful
activities to investigate, detect and prosecute crime and to
protect the public," said a Home Office spokeswoman.
“The first part of the [Directive] was transposed into UK law in
October 2007 but the Government made a declaration … to postpone
its application to the retention of communications data relating to
internet access, internet telephony and internet email until 2009.
So the measures referred to in the Communications Data Bill will
complete the transposition of the Directive for IP [internet
protocol] communications data," said the Home Office
spokeswoman.
The Bill is likely to follow the lead of last year's Data
Retention (EC Directive) Regulations in ordering providers to keep
the data for 12 months.
Law enforcement agencies can gain access to such data with a
court-ordered warrant. Though providers almost uniformly keep the
information for such periods to resolve any future billing
disputes, the laws will ensure that they do so.
The laws order the retention of who called whom, when and for
how long but not the content of phone calls. The internet log
retention orders will also mandate the keeping of information on a
user's activity but not the content of any communications.
A telecoms business lobby group told OUT-LAW.COM at the passing
of the Regulations last year that the orders would have little
impact on the industry.
"The reality is that nothing much has changed. The new
legislation will make little practical difference as most telecoms
providers keep certain information for billing purposes and
customer records," said Michael Eagle of the Federation of
Communications Services. "That information would be enough to meet
the requirements of law enforcement agencies. There is no need to
keep more data that you are ever likely to be asked for."
The Home Office would not release details of the Bill and how it
would work. A statement, though, said: "the purpose of the Bill is
to allow communications data capabilities for the prevention and
detection of crime and protection of national security to keep up
with changing technology through providing for the collection and
retention of such data".
"Unless the legislation is updated to reflect these changes, the
ability of public authorities to carry out their crime prevention
and public safety duties and to counter these threats will be
undermined," it said.
The European Commission had put a deadline of 15 March 2009 for
the transposition into law of the whole Directive.
