The EU Data Retention Directive, formally known as
"Directive 2006/24/EC" came into force on 15 March 2006.
The introduction of this Directive gave rise to the UK Data
Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009 (the
"Regulations") which came into force yesterday (6th April
2009).
The Regulations provide that each 'Public Communications
Service Provider' is obliged to retain 'communications
data' including the date and time of the log-in or log-off from
the internet access service, the IP address allocated by the
internet access service provider and the user ID of the subscriber
or registered user of the internet access service.
So just what is a 'Public Communications Service
Provider'? Essentially it is the entity which provides us, the
public, with an electronic communications network for the purpose
of making electronic communication services i.e. Internet Service
Providers (ISP's) such as BT and Virgin Media. As such the
responsibility for collecting and
