Common Industry Statement on Storage of Traffic Data for Law Enforcement Purposes

Concerns

Mandatory retention, however, is neither economically efficient nor effective for criminal investigation. This coalition, therefore, urges governments to co-ordinate toward a data retention regime based on existing storage of end-user traffic data for legitimate business purposes and to seek advice and opinions from key industry stakeholders. Insufficient public input and multi-lateral harmonisation is likely to result in policies that harm CSPs and their end-users and impair a competitive and dynamic communications and IT services market.

In addition to the lack of proper consultation with industry, there are fundamental concerns with many of the proposed traffic data storage regulations:

1. scope of requirements (i.e., overly broad definitions of traffic data and excessive storage periods);
2. significant costs involved with storing and processing large volumes of data;
3. Technical feasibility - how hardware and software modifications can accommodate data storage and processing requests; and
4. Damage to end-user confidence due to privacy concerns and increased security risks involved with storing large volumes of data.