Danish Police Admit That Data Retention Hasn't Helped At All

from the time-to-ditch-it dept

There's been a big push around the globe to ramp up data retention rules, which require various online services to keep all sorts of data on their users for a long time, just in case it's possible that law enforcement officials might need that data at some later date. That this only adds to the pile of data, and often makes it more difficult to find useful data, is never discussed. That this likely puts more people's private data at risk of being hacked or accidentally revealed is never discussed. Also, almost never discussed: whether or not such data retention laws actually help solve crimes.

Over in Denmark, we have an answer, and that answer is an emphatic no. After half a decade of having strict data retention laws, the Danish police have announced that it has not helped them find criminals. And, as predicted, having all that data has made it unwieldy for law enforcement when they actually think they need some data.

“Session logging has caused serious practical problems,” the ministry's staffers write in the report. “The implementation of session logging proved to be unusable to the police; this became clear the first time they tried to use [the data] as part of a criminal investigation.”

This seems like a pretty damning point concerning data retention. Hopefully, at the very least, this example is raised whenever any other country proposes data retention laws.