All the data collected by Europol regarding citizens linked to no criminal activity will from now on be deleted after a retention period of just 6 months. The order to do, as such, has been ordered to the law enforcement agency by the European Data Protection Supervisor(EDPS) on January 3rd,2022 following a legal suit against it filed in 2019.
In general, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation maintains enormous data sets containing information of individuals as per the governing body policing.
But a lawsuit was filed in this regards a couple of years ago asking amendments regarding data minimization and storage limitation of innocent citizens linked to criminal records and amounting to over 4.8 Petabytes of data scrapped from people staying in asylums, featured in crime reports and hacked phones.
Therefore, Europol will have to delete all these records and should maintain a pattern of maintaining them for just 6 months.
However, the Netherlands-based agency has hit back at the new regulation on Data Subject Categorization and said that it will re-appeal against the decision of EDPS as the new time frame will not give it enough ability to analyze complex and large datasets making it difficult for the police to precisely track down criminal activities.
Europol is seeking a guidance from its Management Board on the EDPS and its potential consequences and its negative impact on the security of EU Citizens.
