First of all, the announced opinion has finally appeared at the WP’s website.
As of yesterday morning, it still wasn’t there. You’ll be able to find it here. [PDF document]

Ever since the data retention directive was in the works, it was evident to me that this matter would be in certain aspects very much connected with personal data protection issues.

This is what I responded to a question at an earlier post at this forum:

(…) “As a side note perhaps I should state that in my post I was deliberately mixing two different subject matters (which in the end, experience shows that are very much intertwined…), which are: ‘data retention’ and my beloved (personal) ‘data protection’.”

Well, according to the newly adopted opinion, I was wrong.

Google, who also cited the data retention directive in its letters to the art. 29 WP, to justify its initially proposed 18 to 24 month period of time for “remembering searches”… apparently, was wrong as well…

This is what the WP says: (…) “A search engine provider can however offer an additional service that falls under the scope of an electronic communications service such as a publicly accessible email service which would be subject to ePrivacy Directive 2002/58/EC and Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC.

Consequently, any reference to the Data Retention Directive in connection with the storage of server logs generated through the offering of a search engine service is not justified.”

This should clarify the matter, right?

Well, in my humble opinion it doesn’t. And I will add that I still think that both matters are very much connected, and that neither myself nor everyone else who has been saying so is wrong.

While I’ll save an analysis of this issue for another post, I’m happy to advance that the data retention directive is very clear when stating that IP addresses fall within the various categories of data to be retained under its provisions.

So then, the next question would be: Are IP addresses personal data?

Bests, TFS