The European Data Protection Inspectorate (EDPS) accused the EU police service – Europol – of illegally storing a huge amount of personal data of ordinary citizens, criminals, refugees and other people. According to internal documents obtained by The Guardian, Europol has already accumulated 4 PB (petabytes; 1 PB equals a quadrillion bytes) of data collected over the past six years from police reports, asylum-seekers’ questionnaires, and encrypted telephone services.
According to data protection experts, the possession of such a volume of personal information is tantamount to conducting mass surveillance, thus, Europol can become the European equivalent of the American National Security Agency (NSA).
The European Data Protection Inspectorate has demanded that Europol henceforth destroy data stored for more than six months. EDPS has given Europol one year to fulfill this requirement. According to the EU police service itself, it did not do anything illegal, and EDPS simply misinterprets the rules for storing information. EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ilva Johansson supported Europol, noting that law enforcement agencies “need tools, resources and time to analyze the data that gets to them legally.”
Meanwhile, the head of EDPS, Wojciech Wewirowski, believes that Europol is using the same arguments that the NSA uses when it wants to defend the right to collect data and mass surveillance. “What did the NSA say to the Europeans when the PRISM scandal broke out (a secret mass intelligence-gathering program disclosed by Edward Snowden in 2013.— “B”)? – says Mr. Wewirowski. – They said that they do not process this data, but simply collect, and they will analyze it only if it is necessary for any investigation. But this is at odds with the European position on the processing of personal data. “
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