A draft law states that the government is willing to risk a ruling by the European Court of Justice, which has repeatedly called the registration of several member states illegal.
The Ministry of Justice itself assesses that there is a “significant process risk” in a very central part of the government’s proposal.
– It is a political game too, because then the Danish government can bet on trying it out, although it is not certain that it can stick to the European Court of Justice.
– But it will take five years before it comes to that, says professor of media Sten Schaumburg-Müller from the University of Southern Denmark.
Thus, the government risks a case before the European Court of Justice, which can again drag it out for years.
The government interprets an EU ruling from 2020 as meaning that the information may well be stored for a year if there is a serious threat to national security.
Among other things, it must be up to the Center for Terror Analysis, which currently assesses that the terrorist threat against Denmark is “serious”.
The center has assessed this every year since 2014. However, this has not always been the case, and the government therefore believes that the assessment is sufficiently concrete and dynamic to be legal.
The professor thinks this is “not so obvious” because it is a general assessment that should not necessarily be included in legislation without further ado.
The Ministry of Justice also mentions the possibility of further assessment.
According to the Ministry’s assessment, the registered data may also be used in cases of “serious crime”, even if it has been collected in cases of national security.
However, there is a “significant process risk” according to the ministry.
– There can of course be problems with extending it to data logged for use in state crime, to also apply to other crime, says Sten Schaumburg-Müller
According to the IT Policy Association, this is a direct circumvention of another EU ruling from 2016.
According to the association, parts of the proposal contain a significant expansion compared to today. The new proposal obliges telecommunications companies to store information from inactive mobile phones.
Thus, it is a matter of registration around the clock of which mobile master the citizens’ phones are connected to.
The authorities can have the telecommunications information provided by a court order. However, this does not apply to the content of the communication itself.
Source: The Nordic Page