From EDRI-gram via Wendy Seltzer: ============================================================ 4. Dutch police report: traffic data seldom essential ============================================================ Telephone traffic data are only necessary to solve crimes in a minority of police investigations. Most cases can be solved without access to traffic data, with the exception of large fraud investigations. These are the conclusions of a Dutch police report produced at the request of the Dutch ministry of Justice. The report was recently obtained by the Dutch civil liberties organisation Bits of Freedom through a public access request. The report undermines the Dutch government's support to the EU draft framework decision on data retention. The report makes no case for the proposed data retention as Dutch police already uses traffic data in 90% of all investigations. The police can already obtain, with a warrant, the traffic data that telecommunication companies store for their own billing- and business purposes. The report also shows that the use of traffic data is a standard tool in police investigations and it not limited to cases of organised crime or terrorism. The report is the result of an evaluation of past investigations by the Dutch police of Rotterdam. Two-thirds of all investigations could have been solved if no traffic data would have been available at all. The three main purposes of traffic data in police investigations are: network analysis (searching for associations of a person to other individuals), tactical support for surveillance and checking of alibis (through GSM location data). Police investigators can compensate a possible lack of traffic data by other investigative methods such as wiretapping, surveillance, a preservation order for traffic data and a longer investigative period. The report states that police officers seldom ask for traffic data older than six months. The report was never sent to the Dutch parliament although members of parliament previously asked for research results about the effectiveness of mandatory data retention. After Bits of Freedom published the report new questions have been raised in the Dutch parliament about the reason for withholding the report. The use of (historic) traffic data in investigations (April 2003, in Dutch) http://www.bof.nl/docs/rapport_verkeersgegevens.pdf (Contribution by Maurice Wessling, EDRI-member Bits of Freedom) --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@metzdowd.com ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]