Following a rise in terrorist activity in Europe in 2004 and the increased use of mobile phone traffic data for law enforcement, the EU proposed new legislation on data retention by communications service providers.
The Anti-Terrorism Crime & Security Act (ATCS) in the UK provides a framework where telecoms companies can retain data for 12 months on a voluntary basis. The European Commission issued a Directive in February 2006 which imposes a regime for the retention of communications traffic data.
As a result of the European Directive for the retention of telecommunications data and in anticipation of specific UK legislation, O2 has implemented voluntary processes to capture the required information. The voluntary scheme is covered by the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act.
Our German customers can choose if their traffic data is stored for six months or deleted after billing.
In Ireland, under the Criminal Justice Act, mobile operators must store call and text message traffic information for three years.
At Manx Telecom, we retain two years of billing records.
