In 2006 there was a directive approved in Brussels on the retention of telecommunications data, i.e. telecom operators’ customers phone and email information. This I understand to be, not contents, but of activity. This directive was born in the wake of Madrid and London terrorists’ activities. Sweden has been slow in implementing this, in fact they’ve done nothing. To understand why read more at The Local Sweden News in English.
As a side-note: The fact that telecom operators have the ability to do this type of logging activity built into their systems is no coincidence. Many of the international laws on wiretapping date back to a series of seminars hosted by the FBI in the United States
in 1993 at its research facility in Quantico, Virginia, called the International Law Enforcement Telecommunications Seminar (ILETS) together with representatives from Canada, Hong Kong, Australia and the EU. The product of these meetings was the adoption of an international standard called the International Requirements for Interception. In 1995 the Council of the European Union approved a secret resolution adopting the ILETS. Following its adoption and without revealing the role of the FBI in developing the standard, countries have adopted laws to this effect. Following adoption of the standard the European Union and the United States offered a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for other countries to sign to commit to the standards. All participating countries were encouraged to adopt the standards so it was natural that international standards organisations, such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the European Telecommunication Standardization Institute (ETSI), would adopt the standards. Read more in Virtual Shadows.