Retain Private Data For Police Or Get Fined $685,000 : Swedish Authority

Retain Private Data For Police Or Get Fined  $685,000 : Swedish Authority

The Swedish ISP Bahnhof may be going to carry on collecting customers' data  for police use as Swedish Telecom Authority ordered, failing which may lead them to get fined 5Million Swedish Konor or approx US $685,000.

Swedish Law states that every ISP in the country is required to retain customers’ location and traffic metadata for six months for law enforcement purposes.

As this kind of practice is a serious issue to privacy of customers and It did, the ISP stopped retaining customers' data taking official permission from  the authority. The service was interrupted  by a regulation issued from Court Of Justice Of The European Union.

Because of the CJEU ruling the authority was forced to allow ISP stop receiving users' meta data. But afterwards the service was on going as government gave pressure on the telecom authority to take back the permission.

Bahnhof refused to start the service again saying that the government and authority just can't ignore a CJEU ruling. the filed a complaint against them and asked European Commission to interfere in the serious matter. 

Rather than assurance from the Commission about the receiving of the complain nothing happened regarding the matter.

According to EU, politicians should not interfere in national telecom services but in Belgium the Council of Ministers had the right to take down decisions of telecom authority. As a result of that Belgium faced court issues made from EU.

Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung has become serious regarding the matter as he said that he had a Pan B for this matter. According to him, Bahnhof will go on with data retaining law without actually letting the law inforcement authorities  getting it. But Karlung has not specified any further details about his master plan and said "of course we have looked at all possible angles, including technical aspects"

He added,

This is not the final word. How can you have a European court which decides that mass surveillance does not comply with human rights while still having a law in Sweden that is basically a carbon copy of the same criticized law?

Everyone is eager to know the final realization of his master plan as he expressed his annoyance saying that he will take this again up to CJEU if it needs to be there.