If Brussels has its way, the European Union will soon be able to store records of who their citizens call, fax or email for up to two years.

In the name of the investigative crackdown following the Sept. 11 attacks, several of Europe’s governments have passed, or are planning to pass, legislation that civil rights advocates say gives investigators too much access to personal data.

Such concerns have increased in recent weeks following the revelation that the European Parliament in September is planning amendments to the previous data protection law that would allow member states to hold personal data for up to two years. Police would also be given access to the information.

Last week, the Danish government, which currently holds the Union’s six-month rotating presidency, sent a questionnaire to member governments asking about data protection laws. Denmark itself is planning to loosen its own strict protection laws.

“The right to privacy in our communications – emails, phone calls, faxes and mobile phones – was a hard-won right which has now been taken away,” said Tony Bunyan in a statement, the editor of the watchdog group Statewatch, which first leaked news of the EU proposal. “Under the guise of fighting terrorism, everyone’s communications are to be placed under surveillance.”

Investigators poke holes through German laws

In Germany the fear among data protection advocates is especially acute. Few other EU states collect as much data on its citizens and protect it as fiercly as does Germany.

But in the months following the Sept. 11 attacks, and the realization they were most likely planned in Hamburg, German investigators have been gaining unprecedented legislative access to personal data.

In the name of rooting out “sleeper” cells of terrorists in Germany, investigators re-introduced computer-aided profiling and asked private companies and universities to hand over the personal data of their employees and students. Germany’s parliament, for the most part, gave its approval.

Now, Germany’s data protection advocates are asking the government to carefully review the changes made in access over the past year. At a meeting in Berlin on Wednesday, Germany’s state data commissioners demanded the government justify the freedoms it has given investigators since Sept. 11.

The commissioners also said a new data protection concept should be developed to adapt to the growing use of the Internet. The World Wide Web is perhaps data protectionists’ greatest fear, Helmut Bäumler, data protection commissioner of the state of Schleswig-Holstein, told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper.

“We need to hinder the possibility that a citizen’s (personal information) will become completely transparent,” Bäumler said.

EU would allow governments to loosen laws

Civil rights advocates say the same needs to be done on an EU-wide level. Until now, the EU has had strict laws that only allowed personal information to be held by companies for billing purposes. As soon as the person was no longer billed, the information was supposed to be erased.

That stipulation would be wiped out under the new amendments and EU member governments would be allowed to pass laws requiring companies to keep information for a certain period.

The proposal would also allow police forces across Europe to share and access the information.

That reasoning has long been rejected by data protection advocates.

"Those that are affected by (such measures), 99.9 percent of the time, are normal citizens who have absolutely no criminal links," Thilo Weichert, of the Society of German Data Protection told DW-TV. "Criminals are able to falsify their identity ... to the point that they can't be detected by those responsible for tracking them down."