27/07/2023, 22:38 CURIA - Documents to the judgment of 6 October 2020, La Quadrature du Net and Others (C‑511/18, C‑512/18 and C‑520/18, EU:C:2020:791). Despite those limitations, the Court held in that judgment that the categories of data retained under that directive and those national rules could allow very precise conclusions to be drawn concerning the private life of the persons concerned, such as the habits of everyday life, permanent or temporary places of residence, daily or other movements, the activities carried out, the social relationships of those persons and the social environments frequented by them and, in particular, provide the means of establishing a profile of those persons. 79 It must also be noted that, although the legislation at issue in the main proceedings does not cover the data concerning the websites visited, it nevertheless provides for the retention of IP addresses. Since IP addresses may be used, among other things, to track an internet user’s complete clickstream and, therefore, his or her entire online activity, those data enable a detailed profile of the user to be established. Thus, the retention and analysis of those IP addresses which is required for such tracking constitute a serious interference with the fundamental rights of the internet user enshrined in Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter (see, to that effect, judgment of 6 October 2020, La Quadrature du Net and Others, C‑511/18, C‑512/18 and C‑520/18, EU:C:2020:791, paragraph 153). 80 In addition, and as SpaceNet observed in its written observations, the data relating to electronic mail services, although not covered by the retention obligation laid down by the legislation at issue in the main proceedings, represent only a very small part of the data in question. 81 Thus, as the Advocate General observed, in essence, in point 60 of his Opinion, the retention obligation laid down by the national legislation at issue in the main proceedings applies to a very broad set of traffic and location data which corresponds, in essence, to those which led to the settled case-law referred to in paragraph 78 above. 82 In addition, in response to a question put to it at the hearing, the German Government stated that only 1 300 entities were listed on the register of persons, authorities or organisations of a social or religious nature whose electronic communications data are not retained under Paragraph 99(2) and Paragraph 113b(6) of the TKG, which clearly represents a small proportion of all users of telecommunications services in Germany whose data fall within the scope of the retention obligation laid down by the national legislation at issue in the main proceedings. The data of users who are subject to a duty of professional secrecy, such as lawyers, doctors and journalists, are thus retained. 83 It is therefore apparent from the order for reference that the retention of traffic and location data provided for by that national legislation concerns practically the entire population without those persons being, even indirectly, in a situation liable to give rise to criminal prosecutions. Similarly, that legislation requires the general retention, without a reason, and without any distinction in terms of personal, temporal or geographical factors, of most traffic and location data, the scope of which corresponds, in essence, to that of the data retained in the cases which led to the case-law referred to in paragraph 78 above. 84 Accordingly, in the light of the case-law cited in paragraph 75 above, a data retention obligation such as that at issue in the main proceedings cannot be regarded as a targeted retention of data, contrary to the submissions of the German Government. 85 In the second place, as regards the data retention period, it follows from the second sentence of Article 15(1) of Directive 2002/58 that the length of the retention period provided for by a national measure imposing a general and indiscriminate retention obligation is indeed a relevant factor, amongst others, in determining whether EU law precludes such a measure, since that sentence requires that that period be ‘limited’. 86 In the present case, it is true that those periods – which amount, according to Paragraph 113b(1) of the TKG, to 4 weeks for location data and to 10 weeks for other data – are significantly shorter that those provided for by the national legislation imposing a general and indiscriminate retention obligation examined by the Court in its judgments of 21 December 2016, Tele2 Sverige and Watson and Others (C‑203/15 and C‑698/15, EU:C:2016:970), of 6 October 2020, La Quadrature du Net and Others (C‑511/18, C‑512/18 and C‑520/18, EU:C:2020:791), and of 5 April 2022, Commissioner of An Garda Síochána and Others (C‑140/20, EU:C:2022:258). https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document_print.jsf;jsessionid=A4432EEFFE3535A201E714AE6441EE66?mode=DOC&pageIndex=1&docid=265881… 18/28