[philipp-de]

There's more. There's technical standards, procedures and laws accross europe for the storage, retrieval and processing of metadata and other information.

it's called ETSI Lawful Interception see: * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception#Technical_d...

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception#Europe

* http://www.etsi.org/index.php/technologies-clusters/technolo...

* http://webapp.etsi.org/WorkProgram/Report_WorkItem.asp?WKI_I...

* http://webapp.etsi.org/WorkProgram/Report_WorkItem.asp?WKI_I...

This has been in place much longer than the "data retention" directive.