Garda Commissioner requests mobile phone firm to retain web-browsing data
The Irish Times reported on 7th November 2008 (Karlin Lillington) that Vodafone - the largest mobile service provider in the State - had received a letter from the Garda Commissioner requesting that detailed information on the web pages people view be retained for possible future criminal investigations.
The request for real-time web-browsing information - the content or the web address (URL) of every web page browsed by users of mobile handsets, palmtop devices or 3G modems - goes beyond the European Union's data retention directive, which the Government intends to implement as a statutory instrument. Such a measure would cover the content of web-based email. "The directive does not pertain to the retention of content, and this would be very concerning," said Deputy Data Protection Commissioner Gary Davis.
This article also appears at www.privacy.ie
