Tech Gets Real: Protect Yourself in the AI Era
Sep 4, 2026 · 13 min · 5 segments
Europe’s attitude towards data retention – seeing it as mass surveillance anytime people’s information is indiscriminately collected and stored – may be changing, judging from a new opinion from the…
And it basically refers to forcing internet service providers and communication service providers to store information about their customers, their users, communications.
And we're generally not talking about the contents of those communications, what exactly it is that people are saying to each other, but rather about metadata, information about those conversations in terms of...
When did they happen? Who contacted whom? From what connection? What was their location? Stuff like that.
And while that's not revealing in the same way as the contents of people's communications, it does tell you an awful lot nonetheless, particularly if you are able to glue together different pieces of metadata and look for patterns.
I mean, you're probably aware of the big backlash against companies like Palantir at the moment, Well, that is basically what they do.
Back in 2006, well before the current era of big data, the European Union introduced a law called the Data Retention Directive.
And this basically meant that all EU countries had to force their telecommunications service providers to store metadata about their customer's phone and internet usage for between 6 and 24 months.
Again, we're not talking about the contents of those calls, the contents of the web pages that they were visiting, but again, lots of information.
If there would be a crime which could be solved using metadata that was stored in this way, well, isn't that a good thing, and shouldn't that be happening? Well, that lasted eight years.
In 2014, there was a big ruling by the Court of Justice in a case that was brought about by Digital Rights Ireland, which said, no, this is blanket surveillance.
And it's very important to tease out the basic understanding of modern surveillance that underpinned the Digital Rights Ireland ruling.
And that is that when you collect and store people's data, their metadata about their communications, That is where the surveillance essentially takes place.
And that's where you have to judge, is it proportionate? Is it infringing on people's fundamental rights? Over in America, there's a very different understanding of these things.
Essentially saying, you can store everyone's information, but surveillance only really takes place when you look at it.
So if the collection and the storage is taking place on a completely untargeted basis with poor safeguards, well, you've got massive privacy violations.
And it basically refers to forcing internet service providers and communication service providers to store information about their customers, their users, communications.
And we're generally not talking about the contents of those communications, what exactly it is that people are saying to each other, but rather about metadata, information about those conversations in terms of...
When did they happen? Who contacted whom? From what connection? What was their location? Stuff like that.
And while that's not revealing in the same way as the contents of people's communications, it does tell you an awful lot nonetheless, particularly if you are able to glue together different pieces of metadata and look for patterns.
I mean, you're probably aware of the big backlash against companies like Palantir at the moment, Well, that is basically what they do.
Back in 2006, well before the current era of big data, the European Union introduced a law called the Data Retention Directive.
And this basically meant that all EU countries had to force their telecommunications service providers to store metadata about their customer's phone and internet usage for between 6 and 24 months.
Again, we're not talking about the contents of those calls, the contents of the web pages that they were visiting, but again, lots of information.
If there would be a crime which could be solved using metadata that was stored in this way, well, isn't that a good thing, and shouldn't that be happening? Well, that lasted eight years.
In 2014, there was a big ruling by the Court of Justice in a case that was brought about by Digital Rights Ireland, which said, no, this is blanket surveillance.
And it's very important to tease out the basic understanding of modern surveillance that underpinned the Digital Rights Ireland ruling.
And that is that when you collect and store people's data, their metadata about their communications, That is where the surveillance essentially takes place.
And that's where you have to judge, is it proportionate? Is it infringing on people's fundamental rights? Over in America, there's a very different understanding of these things.
Essentially saying, you can store everyone's information, but surveillance only really takes place when you look at it.
So if the collection and the storage is taking place on a completely untargeted basis with poor safeguards, well, you've got massive privacy violations.
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