A Council paper now circulating (via Netzpolitik) among member states outlines a plan that would apply not only to telecom operators but to nearly every major digital service, including cloud platforms, domain hosts, payment processors, and even end-to-end encrypted messengers such as WhatsApp and Signal. Officials insist they do not intend to compromise encryption or read private messages. What they want is the so-called metadata: who contacted whom, from where, at what time, and through which service.

https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-revives-plan-for-year-long-data-retention