Traffic Data Retention (TDR)

Summary

ISPs will have to routinely keep "Traffic Data" for electronic communications. This means keeping

Source and Destination addresses
"Routing information"
Size and duration of event
Location information (mobile phone calls only)

How does this apply to email, phone calls and the web?

For email, this will mean storing From:, To:, Date: and all Received: headers.

For phone calls, this will mean storing the calling and called person's phone numbers, the duration of the call, the location information (for mobile phones, i.e. where you were when you placed/received the call) and what network both phones used.

For web browsing, this will mean storing all information relating to the machine doing the browsing, the time of the activity, the web site visited and what links if any were followed to reach the visited web site.

Legal Background

This bill comes on foot of Article 15 of Directive 2002/58/EC which relates to Data Privacy, and is intended to replace Directive 97/66/EC. The latter Directive was passed into Irish Law as Data Protection (Amendment) Bill, 2002.

Section 1 of Article 15 states that "Member states may adopt legislative measures to restrict the scope of rights and obligations...in this Directive when such restriction constitutes a necessary, appropriate and proportionate measure within a democratic society to safeguard national security...defence, public security and the prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of criminal offences or the unauthorised use of the electronic communication system"

UPDATE : 31st of July, 2003 - Draft regulations transposing the Directive 2002/58/EC into law have been published, and the Dept. of Communications have opened a public forum for consultation, which finished on the 20th of August. The Minister for Communications has issued a press release, and a member of the European Commission with an interest in this area gave a speech on this issue on the 15th of July. The Guild has made a submission to the Dept.

UPDATE : 6th of November, 2003 - Statutory Instrument 535 of 2003 has been published and signed into law.

UPDATE : 29th of April, 2004 - A Draft Framework Directive has been published by the Council of the EU - one of the four proposers was Ireland!

Forum

The Dept. of Jutice, Equality and Law Reform held a Forum on the proposed legislation in February 2002, and the Guild sent a representative. As a result of this, they set up a website (accessible through the main DJELR website) which contains:

A list of forum participants
A statement from the minister for Justice
Links to appropriate EC and Irish legislation
Papers presented by
- Minister Mc Dowell
- Joe Meade, the Data Protection Commissioner.
- Asst. Commisioner Egan of the Garda Síochána
- Aidan Hodson of the Dept. of the Marine, Communications and Natural Resources.
Rough minutes of the open discussion which followed the formal presentations

The Website also contains a feedback section, which contains:

A statement from the Irish Internet Association.

Symposium

The Guild held a public symposium on TDR in Trinity College Dublin in March 2002, in association with Dublin University Internet Society. Please see our meetings page for the speakers' slides. Approximately fifty people attended the event, with many of the forum participants represented.

Meetings

The Guild had a meeting with the Criminal Law Division of the Dept. of Justice, Equality and Law Reform on the 29th of May, 2003. The minutes of the meeting have now been published.

Timeline

The initial phase of public consultation finished in July 2003. A further phase will take place will take place once the draft Heads of Bill are ready, and the second phase of consultation will consist of requests for comments on the draft.

Due to the demands made on DJELR by Ireland's Presidency of the EU, it seems likely that the draft Heads of Bill will not be ready until April at the earliest.