Judge: full retention should not

Governments can not just let keep all data of all citizens.

The court issued a ruling in a case concerning retention in Sweden and Great Britain. In Sweden, providers had all the details of their users' systematically and continually 'save without exception. In Britain providers had to do last year. Earlier, the court had already put a line through these so-called data retention in Ireland.

User data are private information. Countries may restrict occasionally the right to privacy, but that exception should not be the rule, according to the court.

Netherlands is also working on a hold. It is not known whether the judgment of the court has consequences for that.