Vodafone received 3,339 police requests last year

The Vodafone Group received 3,339 requests for communications data by law enforcement agencies in 2014, compared with 3,773 demands in 2013.

The data was published in Vodafone’s most recent country-by-country Law Enforcement Disclosure Report.

The Maltese government issued a statement, clarifying that these statistics were not legal interceptions carried out  by the Malta Security Service.

“The vast majority of the requests to the telecommunications company are initiated by the police at the request of victims of crimes for issues such as phone thefts, loss of phone, anonymous calls and similar issues,” the government said.

“Other requests by the Police to the telecommunications company would be in relation to criminal investigations and search for missing persons.”

In 2013, there were 3,773 warrants filed by the Malta government agencies for metadata. Metadata can include client's names and addresses, device locations, and the times of calls and messages. Single warrants can target hundreds of people and several warrants can be for information about a single individual.

Vodafone said that the legal position was unclear regarding whether or not it would be lawful for the company to disclose statistics related to agency and authority communications data demands. "We asked the authorities for guidance and have been informed that we can disclose this information," the company said.

In 2009, government enacted new regulations binding service providers to give the police and security services personal data held by fixed and mobile telephony companies and Internet service providers. The data includes incoming and outgoing telephone numbers, subscribers’ details, Internet protocol addresses, log-in and log-out times of Internet access and email services, and location data identifying the geographic location of mobile phones.

The rules also provide for data conservation orders – which force companies to retain data for periods up to two years – in line with the EU’s controversial data retention directive. The legislation, which the EU says is necessary to help fight terrorism and organised crime, was passed by justice ministers in Brussels to force Internet service providers and fixed-line and mobile operators to keep details of their customers’ communications for up to two years.

But in 2014, in the joined cases Digital Rights Ireland and Seitlinger and Others (C-293/12 and C-594/12) the European Court of Justice, the highest court in the European Union, declared the Data Retention Directive (Directive 2006/24/EC) to be invalid, finally deciding on a piece of legislation that has been causing controversy for at least a decade.