National Security and Retention of Telecommunications Data in Light of Recent Case Law of the European Courts

Abstract

The Court of Justice is once again clarifying the limits of the application of data retention laws – General obligation to retain data exceeds the limits of what is strictly necessary within a democratic society – The national security exception does not preclude a judicial assessment of the legitimacy of its application – The existence of a genuine and specific threat as a premise for the use of untargeted data retention measures – The possibility of searching for the gold standard of data retention based on algorithmic processing – Different perceptions of the Court of Justice position by the referring courts – The Conseil d'État’s position distorts the idea of the protection of fundamental rights that is enshrined in the EU legal order