Retention period for phone data to be cut

THE amount of time for which people’s telephone records are retained will be reduced from three years to two under new legislation to be published today.

People’s internet records, meanwhile, will be retained for a year under the Communications (Retention of Data) Bill 2009, which will be announced by Justice Minister Dermot Ahern.

The issue of data retention has caused much controversy in recent years, and brought the Government into conflict with the Data Protection Commissioner.