Europe’s highest court has given a judgement in the challenge taken by Irish human rights advocacy group Digital Rights Ireland (DRI) to the EU’s regime of Data Retention and mass surveillance. Digital Rights Ireland welcomes European Court of Justice decision on Data Retention Directive. The Court has found that data retention “entails a wide-ranging and particularly serious interference with the fundamental rights to respect for private life and to the protection of personal data” and that it “entails an interference with the fundamental rights of practically the entire European population”. TJ McIntyre, Chairman of Digital Rights Ireland, said that “This is the first assessment of mass surveillance by a supreme court since the Snowden revelations. The ECJ’s judgement finds that untargeted monitoring of the entire population is unacceptable in a democratic society.”