London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Sunday, Aug 24, 2025

Europe’s state of mass surveillance

Europe’s state of mass surveillance

The EU’s top court says mass surveillance is banned. Governments do it anyway.

Jack Murphy* was suspicious. His ex-girlfriend, Eve Doherty, seemed to know a lot about who he was calling.

His suspicions were merited. Doherty had been using her job in the Irish police force to access his phone records, an investigation by the local judiciary revealed. Doherty was disciplined and transferred in 2011.

Three years later, in 2014, the European Court of Justice (CJEU) ruled that the Irish law that forced telcos and internet service providers to hang on to traffic and location data was contrary to EU law, and so was the EU directive it was based on. The data retention regime allowed government agencies to access citizens' data in ways that violated their privacy — like what Doherty was doing when she accessed those phone records of her ex-boyfriend.

And yet, the risk of similar cases — of police officers overstepping their powers to access phone records — still lingers today.

The landmark 2014 ruling was followed by a bevy of subsequent judgments from the EU's highest court that reinforced its message to stop blanket data retention. But it didn't stop Ireland from keeping its mass surveillance of phone and internet data, including who you call and where you are, largely intact.

“In Ireland, we've been in a period of lawlessness, at least since 2001,” said TJ McIntyre, chair of Digital Rights Ireland, the non-profit organization whose legal complaint brought down the EU Data Retention Directive in the landmark 2014 case.

The pattern in Ireland is unsettling. Dublin sets up a data retention regime, the court then kills it after years of slow legal proceedings that go up to the European level, only to see the government reboot a similar regime, with some tweaks, that risks violating the same rights and principles that brought down the earlier one.

Just last month, the Irish justice ministry presented its latest iteration of a data retention bill after the EU’s top court’s latest ruling against the Irish regime in April 2022. But McIntyre argued Dublin’s latest attempt is just as harmful to privacy. It allows data retained for national security reasons to be accessed for criminal investigations, for instance, which he argues runs counter to the court's decision in April.


Cat and mouse


Decision after decision, the European Court of Justice's 27 top judges have fine-tuned their belief that mass retention of phone and internet traffic and location data violates fundamental EU privacy rights.

But many European law enforcement and government officials don't seem to want to listen. They argue that such data retention regimes are vital for crime fighting.

In a series of judgments from 2014 onwards, including most recently in late 2021 and early 2022, the CJEU has mostly sided with privacy groups, arguing that blanket data retention isn’t legal — except in some circumstances, with proper safeguards and if there’s a serious threat to national security.

The CJEU has mostly sided with privacy groups, arguing that blanket data retention isn’t legal


It’s a fight that at times has gotten dirty. The French government at first tried to pressure its court not to follow EU case law, arguing it went against the country’s “constitutional identity.” Paris even mulled seeking changes to the EU’s founding treaties or the Charter of Fundamental Rights, known as the bloc’s primary law, to dodge the EU's top court rulings.

In Denmark, government ministers openly criticized the EU court. “I think that the fundamental problem here is that the Court of Justice of the European Union creates law without democratic legitimacy,” Danish Justice Minister Nick Hækkerup said following a ruling in late 2021. “After all, they are just judges.”

Passions run equally high in the opposing camp.

“Data retention is really what politicized me,” said German Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer. “I still think it's really the most privacy-intrusive legislation that the EU has ever enacted because it's about collecting information about the entire population.”


Creeping surveillance


Even when they haven’t been openly hostile to the bloc’s top court, EU capitals have been ruthless in exploiting loopholes in its rulings.

Belgium and Denmark, for instance, are devising schemes that technically collect data in a targeted way rather than in a general way, which is what the court allows. But it’s arguably targeted in name only.

The Belgian proposal for targeting areas where there’s lots of crime sets the bar so low that it covers the whole country. Denmark isn’t much better, its crime level threshold means that close to 70 percent of the country’s population will be covered by its framework.

Governments are also looking to extend these regimes' reach: Belgium's proposal aims to cover messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal, as well as the traditional telco operators. The plan risks effectively banning privacy-preserving platforms like Signal or Threema by forcing them to store data on users they don't currently collect.

France has tried another way to keep its blanket surveillance intact. Its top administrative court approved the government’s argument that the country is effectively under a constant terrorist threat, meaning that blanket data retention is OK. However there are already questions over whether this is legal, with one former EU judge arguing that the risk of terrorism doesn’t constitute a threat.

This game of cat and mouse has at times become a farce. Denmark’s tweaked data retention regime was in place for a mere six days this year before a fresh ruling from the CJEU rendered it illegal.

“The EU is really having a rule of law problem here, because governments knowingly ignore the case law because they don't like it. And the Commission refuses to enforce it,” said Breyer, the MEP.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner Purchases Third Property Amid Housing Tax Reforms Debate
HSBC Switzerland Ends Relationships with Over 1,000 Clients from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Qatar, and Egypt
Sharia Law Made Legally Binding in Austria Despite Warnings Over 'Incompatible' Values
Italian Facebook Group Sharing Intimate Images Without Consent Shut Down Amid Police Investigation
Dutch Foreign Minister Resigns Amid Deadlock Over Israel Sanctions
Trump and Allies Send Messages of Support to Ukraine on Independence Day Amid Ongoing Conflict
China Reels as Telegram Chat Group Shares Hidden-Camera Footage of Women and Children
Sam Nicoresti becomes first transgender comedian to win Edinburgh Comedy Award
Builders uncover historic human remains in Lancashire house renovation
Australia Wants to Tax Your Empty Bedrooms
MotoGP Cameraman Narrowly Avoids Pedro Acosta Crash at Hungarian Grand Prix
FBI Investigates John Bolton Over Classified Documents in High-Profile Raids
Report reveals OpenAI pitched national ChatGPT Plus subscription to UK ministers
Labour set to freeze income tax thresholds in long-term 'stealth' tax raid
Coca‑Cola explores sale of Costa coffee chain
Trial hears dog walker was chased and fatally stabbed by trio
Restaurateur resigns from government hospitality council over tax criticism
Spanish City funfair shut after serious ride injury
Suspected arson at Ilford restaurant leaves three in critical condition
Tottenham beat Manchester City to go top of Premier League
Bank holiday heatwave to hit 30°C before remnants of Hurricane Erin arrive
UK to deploy immigration advisers to West Africa to block fake visas
Nurse who raped woman continued working for a year despite police alert
Drought forces closures of England’s canal routes, canceling boat holidays
Sweet tooth scents: food-inspired perfumes surge as weight-loss drugs suppress appetites
Experts warn Britain dangerously reliant on imported food
Family of Notting Hill Carnival murder victim call event unmanageable
Bunkers, Billions and Apocalypse: The Secret Compounds of Zuckerberg and the Tech Giants
Ukraine Declares De Facto War on Hungary and Slovakia with Terror Drone Strikes on Their Gas Lifeline
Animated K-pop Musical ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Becomes Netflix’s Most-Watched Original Animated Film
New York Appeals Court Voids Nearly $500 Million Civil Fraud Penalty Against Trump While Upholding Fraud Liability
Elon Musk tweeted, “Europe is dying”
Far-Right Activist Convicted of Incitement Changes Gender and Demands: "Send Me to a Women’s Prison" | The Storm in Germany
Hungary Criticizes Ukraine: "Violating Our Sovereignty"
Will this be the first country to return to negative interest rates?
Child-free hotels spark controversy
North Korea is where this 95-year-old wants to die. South Korea won’t let him go. Is this our ally or a human rights enemy?
Hong Kong Launches Regulatory Regime and Trials for HKD-Backed Stablecoins
China rehearses September 3 Victory Day parade as imagery points to ‘loyal wingman’ FH-97 family presence
Trump Called Viktor Orbán: "Why Are You Using the Veto"
Horror in the Skies: Plane Engine Exploded, Passengers Sent Farewell Messages
MSNBC Rebrands as MS NOW Amid Comcast’s Cable Spin-Off
AI in Policing: Draft One Helps Speed Up Reports but Raises Legal and Ethical Concerns
Shame in Norway: Crown Princess’s Son Accused of Four Rapes
Apple Begins Simultaneous iPhone 17 Production in India and China
A Robot to Give Birth: The Chinese Announcement That Shakes the World
Finnish MP Dies by Suicide in Parliament Building
Outrage in the Tennis World After Jannik Sinner’s Withdrawal Storm
William and Kate Are Moving House – and the New Neighbors Were Evicted
Class Action Lawsuit Against Volkswagen: Steering Wheel Switches Cause Accidents
×