To put the link into perspective: That article stems from a debate around the German "Vorratsdatenspeicherung", an attempt to put law into place which forces te

To put the link into perspective: That article stems from a debate around the German "Vorratsdatenspeicherung", an attempt to put law into place which forces telecommunication service providers to store metadata (of telephone calls and - technically curious - emails) for six months. Law enforcement would then be able to access metadata for such a timespan. Law enforcement could query for all available data before that law was discussed, but the data wasn't necessarily available. FWIW, the law was put into place and revoked by the German constitutional court, the "Bundesverfassungsgericht". Of course, German data privacy law works a bit differently, too. Metadata is covered, as long as it points (possibly indirectly) to natural persons. As long as the data isn't needed for any purpose covered by the business it stems for (as when the telephone bill is over the dispute deadlines), it has to be deleted. The whole debate is about 5-3 years old here in Germany.