Germany plans to allow retention of phone, Internet data for up to 10 weeks to fight crime

Published May 21, 2015

The German government plans to introduce legislation allowing phone and Internet records to be retained for up to 10 weeks, a new effort to push through a crime-fighting measure that has run into trouble in European courts.

The European Union's top court last year scrapped EU legislation allowing indiscriminate collection of communication data, finding that the rules were too broad. That law required telecommunication firms to store data for at least six months.

Germany never implemented the directive because of objections from its own supreme court, but its governing coalition agreed to introduce narrower legislation.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas on Wednesday presented what he called a balanced compromise. It foresees the retention of call data and IP addresses, but not data on emails.

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