In one of its last acts in office, the Irish government has finalized legislation that will require ISPs to keep logs of their subscribers’ use of the Web for one year. The information will be available to the police and other government authorities upon request. Ireland’s adoption of the storage requirement is significant as Ireland is home to many Internet hosting businesses and company data centers and the Irish authorities have argued for a broad application of the law to Internet-based businesses with activities in Ireland.

IP addresses, destination of e-mails and recipients of VoIP calls to be kept for a year

The new law — the Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011 —was signed into law on Jan. 26, 2011. It requires both telephone companies and ISPs to keep records of communications traffic and location data on their networks—the “who”, “when” and “where” information about telephone calls, Internet access, and e-mail.

ISPs must retain a range of specific information about Internet communications traffic and subscribers’ identities, including the following....