Silvia SIGNORATO, PhD
Research Fellow in Criminal Procedure, School of Law
University of Padua
Italy
Lecturer in Criminal Procedure
Institut für Italienisches Recht
University of Innsbruck
Austria
Abstract
The Information and Communication Technology nowadays plays a core role in the execution of crimes of economic criminality.
This seems to be due to two factors, that can be defined as the structural factor and the instrumental factor.
Moreover, every time we use the new technologies we leave behind us some sorts of “traces”, i.e. the traffic and location data on both legal entities and natural persons and to the related data necessary to identify the subscriber or registered user.
Such data can be extremely useful in the context of criminal investigations.
The regulation on the obligation of the States to require the retention of such data by service providers for investigative purposes, for the discovery and repression of crimes is called “data retention”.
Data retention has some general features that are valid at global level.
Within the European Union the respective regulation set out by the Directive 2006/24/EC has been declared invalid by the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Therefore it seems necessary to adopt a new European regulation on data retention, regarding to which the article traces in its conclusions the possible reference points.