Macau (MNA) –Â The Macau SAR Government has resorted to a regulation which had been nullified by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for violating fundamental rights to back its consultation paper on the wiretapping law, claims activist Jason Chao in a statement on Monday.
The Telecommunication Interception and Protection Legal System bill under consultation in the city advances a legal requirement for local telecommunication operators and web service providers to retain records of user activities. Entities failing to comply with such requirement would be fined an administrative penalty of up to MOP500,000 (US$61,949).
The activist highlights that the MSAR Government has supported the requirement presented in the proposal upon a provision from Portuguese law no. 32/2008, which had been invalidated by the ECJ in 2014.
The ECJ ruled then that the data retention requirement thereby established breached the right to private life and the right to personal data protection, thus, nullifying the European Union Directive 2006/24/EC, of which Portuguese law no. 32/2008 derives from.
Chao claims that the Portuguese law has thus ‘survived merely a piece of domestic legislation yet did not go unchallenged in Portugal,’ adding that it was legally challenged at the Portuguese Constitutional Court in 2017, though. Yet, because the Court did not perceive it as ‘unconstitutional,’ it has upheld its validity in Portugal.
‘The omission of key legal developments in the comparative law section in the consultation paper would mislead the public to believe that the data retention requirement was widely accepted. The fact is that requiring web service providers to retain user activities remains highly controversial,’ noted Mr. Chao.
