Europol ordered to delete data not linked with crime

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union crime agency has been ordered to erase information related to individuals with no proven link to crime. The 27-nation bloc’s data protection watchdog said it reprimanded Europol two years ago for the continued storage of large volumes of such data but noted that the crime agency has not complied with requests to set an appropriate data retention period. The watchdog said it imposed a six-month period for the assessment of new datasets and determine whether information can be kept. It gave the crime agency a 12-month delay to comply with the decision for data it received before Jan. 4.