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I suppose you wanted to say: "nobody is allowed to store your personal data without warning you and giving methods to correct and erase your data."
This is a principle of German "Recht auf Informationelle Selbstbestimmung".

Anyway, I agree with Germany's 'commissioner for data protection and freedom of information' Peter Schaar (wrong name in TFA) that an IP is public, but nevertheless personal data (better term in German: "personenbezogene Daten") because as the 'Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data' (see Directive 95/46/EC) states:

Article 2
Definitions

For the purposes of this Directive:
(a) 'personal data' shall mean any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person ('data subject'); an identifiable person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identification number or to one or more factors specific to his physical, physiological, mental, economic, cultural or social identity;

Some prior commentators already agreed that a telephone number is personal data (though many don't seem to know the difference between private and personal data). Why not treat IPs the same way?

Please note that not all is well in Europe since telephone numbers (already regarded as personal data) and IPs have to be stored by the associated carriers (ISPs for example) for later processing by law enforcement agencies (allegedly solely) in the course of investigating terroristic activities and other crimes (see 'Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks').
This is heavily disputed (see e.g. http://www.dataretentionisnosolution.com/ and Digital Rights Ireland challenge to Data Retention).
By the way, there are some proposed methods to disable logging of IPs regarding Apache webserver - et al..

For more information about 'EU Data Retention' see EU Data Retention - doqumentation and Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Second, the authorities in Germany state that everything was done legally and that it's not a case of 'dragnet investigation', since neither prosecution nor police had access to all the data but instead the search was conducted by the CC companies. It was just "standard investigation procedure", even though it has never been done before.

Third, the majority of CCs were apparently not stolen; one of the porn "consumers" was a secondary school teacher (still living in his moms basement btw); huge amounts of kiddie porn were found on his computers. Most of the 322 persons that turned up in the search have a criminal record related to child porn. The whole investigation is sold as a major success throughout the big media outlets in Germany.

The owners of the transaction server are still unknown and will probably remain so (not as stupid as their customers, operating from the Philippines).

My thoughts: whatever data there is out there, it will be used - by governments, corporations and individuals. You do not have any control over your data in a post-9/11-world. The more data there is, the greater the risk you will end up as a match in someones DB query. Now, when it comes to child porn, many people don't care any longer if a search was warranted or illegal, they will only see the results. Along with rising amounts of data being collected, the risk of being targeted as an innocent person rises exponentially. This is why we should all be worried, no matter how glad we are that a few more sick child abusers end up in jail. Seeing how much data we generate each day, I'm increasingly glad I have neither a CC nor a cell phone.

On a somewhat related note: European institutions and governments seem to have no problem with handing out whatever data there is; along with the flight passenger data, the US still has full access to the SWIFT transaction data as well, even though there's no legal backing for such practices in the EU.

The directive mandates recording all numbers you call, when you call, for how long you call and where you are during the phone call (in case of mobile phones). It also mandates logging the from- and to- addresses of all emails you send, and recording of all VoIP call from/to data. The directive does not require a court order before the data can be accessed, and it can be accessed in the investigation of each "serious crime" (whereby each member state is free to decide for itself what constitutes a "serious crime").

And don't try to put it down to "those Eurocrats", because it was pushed through in particular by the UK presidency. All in the name of battling them terrorists, of course.

as you can see here infringment of intellectual propriety is one of "crimes" that they want to fight

PRESS RELEASE FFII -- [ Europe / ICT / Information Society ]

EU adopts Big Brother directive, ignores industry and civil society

14 December 2005 (Strasbourg, France) The European Parliament today adopted a directive that will create the largest monitoring database in the world, tracking all communications within the EU. "From today, all EU citizens are to be tracked and monitored like common criminals," says Pieter Hintjens, president of the FFII.

The Data Retention Directive was passed by 378 votes to 197, following deals between the Council and the leaders of the two largest parties in Parliament, the EPP-ED (Conservatives) and the PSE (Socialists). The Rapporteur for the directive, Alexander Alvaro (Liberals) had his name removed from the report in protest.

Jonas Maebe of the FFII says: "Among other harsh measures, the directive mandates recording of the source and destination of all emails you send and every call you make, and your location and movement during mobile phone calls. Additionally, the directive says nothing about who has to pay for all this logging, which will significantly distort the internal telecommunications market."

"Moreover, the directive disregards how Internet protocols work. For example, tracking Internet telephony calls is generally impossible without closely watching the content of all data packets. The reason is that such connections are not necessarily set up via a central server which can perform the necessary logging. On top of that you have techniques like tunneling (VPN's) which make it simply impossible to look at the content", he adds.

The gathered data can be made available without special warrants, and without limit to certain types of crime. There will be no independent evaluation, and no extra privacy and no specific security safeguards. The data will be retained for periods ranging from 6 months up to any duration a member state can convince the Commission of.

Hartmut Pilch of the FFII says: "This outcome proves that we have to remain vigilant at all times and work on every relevant directive from the start. Even now, the planned IPRED2 directive, also unanimously condemned by industry and civil society, threatens to turn everyone caught by a patent into a criminal."

Background Information

* Two-page overview of the effects of the most important amendments
http://www.ffii.org/~jmaebe/dataret/plen1/summary. pdf

* English video stream of today's plenary session
http://media.vrijschrift.org/ep_vote_datared_05121 4_en.wmv

* Original language video stream of today's plenary session
http://media.vrijschrift.org/ep_vote_datared_05121 4_or.wmv

* Data retention: legislative sausage machine in overdrive
http://wiki.ffii.org/DataRet0512En

* News, position papers on and analysis of the directive
http://wiki.dataretentionisnosolution.com

* Permanent link to this press release
http://wiki.ffii.org/DataRetPr051214En

About the FFII -- http://www.ffii.org

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) is a non-profit association registered in several European countries, which is dedicated to the spread of data processing literacy. FFII supports the development of public information goods based on copyright, free competition, open standards. More than 850 members, 3,000 companies and 90,000 supporters h

The Dutch government has made it clear that they won't be paying ISP's for it.
The Dutch ISP xs4all is actively campaigning against this law.
They give the realistic argument that this law will commercially cripple European ISPs, and the government paying for the storage is unrealistic.

So, Brown's been doing popular things wherever possible. He was very big on the whole debt-cancellation move during the summer, for instance. He's trying to look as good as possible to voters. He's not likely to endorse law changes along the lines of 'hey, people I'd like to have vote for me at the next election: you're not allowed to copy CDs to your iPods!'

And while we are all chatting about this subject, the European Parliament are about to pass draconian anti-privacy laws against all forms of electronic communications.

While these laws have been mooted for some time, it seems that 13 December 2005 is the crunch date, and the UK are pushing for it !

From the FFII newsletter -

PRESS RELEASE FFII -- [ Europe / ICT / Information Society ]

EU introducing "Big Brother" anti-privacy law, warns FFII

5 December 2005 (Brussels, Belgium) The EU is passing a "Big Brother" law to track every electronic communication, warns the FFII, an international information rights group based in Munich.

"Imagine a world in which the state follows everything you do. A world where computers watch every step you make. A world in which privacy is dead and the machines can track down every dissident in minutes. A world ruled by unelected agencies, working hand-in-hand with powerful commercial interests. A world in which citizens have no rights except to consume. Science fiction? The Age of the Machines? No, this is Europe, coming to you in 2006."

So warns Pieter Hintjens, president of the FFII. He says, "the EU is about to pass a directive to track every communication you make. This law makes the old Soviet spy states look like amateurs."

He continues "This law goes against our European traditions of civil liberty. It appears to break Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It will destroy small ISPs and raise prices. To enforce it, the EU will have to shut or monitor every cybercafe, web mail access, and wifi hotspot. Such a regime would be more authoritarian even than China. Even the US, after 9/11, does not have such oppressive laws. The EU does not need this law: it is a bad law, pushed through without respect for the democratic process."

Erik Josefsson of the FFII says: "We are entering into an era of 'I don't have time' legislation. With the expanded competence of the Commission (see consequences of the ECJ Judgement September 13, case c-176/03 Commission v. Council), the underarmed and weakened Parliament stands no chance to do its job properly. The 'sausage machine' is far too easy to abuse."

The Big Brother "data retention directive" makes Internet and telephony providers record "communications traffic data" for up to several years. These huge amounts of detailed personal data can be easily leaked, stolen, and abused. The forces - mainly the UK government - pushing the Big Brother law claim it will prevent terrorism. The FFII does not accept this simplistic argument. The real targets, it appears, are ordinary citizens, going about their daily business.

The FFII president points out, "almost everyone carries a mobile phone. With this law, your mobile phone and web browser becomes Big Brother's way of watching you. You will never be alone again. If you do not like this idea, contact your MEP today, urgently, and explain why it worries you. On 13 December 2005, personal privacy becomes history."

Background Information

News, position papers on and analysis of the directive

How Parliament is denied a chance to properly evaluate the directive

Procedural overview of the directive

MEP contact guide

Permanent link to thi

There will be a law that says pretty much just that. After the European pairlement went to work on the "data retention" legislation (mandatory traffic data collection for everyone and every ISP) IP allocation logs and e-mail logs are pretty much all that is left. (The original plans, which predated 11 sept. 2001 by a year, called for keeping http logs for everyone in europe for years... I am not kidding )

Second few ISP`s would want to operate without IP allocation logs. It kinda sucks to have a spammer on your network and not be able to stop him. Sooner or later your entire IP space gets on a blacklist and then not a single customer can send mail.

Third, the music industry, represented by brein, really wanted this verdict. They even payed for the stamp collectors lawyers eventhough the guy himself was a lawyer.

Just when the petition from http://www.dataretentionisnosolution.com/ closed.

If you are a European citizen you can sign a petition against the directive here.

According to a joint newspaper article by Swedish MEPs Charlotte Cederschiöld (conservative) and Jonas Sjöstedt (socialist) that was published some months ago, the only thing that can stop the directive is feedback to the politicians from the general public on the same scale as the software patents directive generated. I don't know if they are right in their assessment, but signing the petition against the directive is at least a first step.

Personally, I would also like to see the European ISPs becoming more active and start spending some real money on lobbying.

As long as it's only the old dinosaurs with pre-Internet business models that are spending lobbying money in Brussels/Washington/Ottawa/Canberra, we will continue to see bad pieces of legislation getting passed everywhere. It's time for a new generation of businesses to realize that politics don't take care of themselves, and that if you let the bad guys' lobbyists rein unopposed, there is a bill to be paid for it later.

How about the right to go where you want without your position being tracked and stored for later use?

BTW, If you are against data retention, please sign the petition:

http://www.dataretentionisnosolution.com/

The Dutch ISP XS4All has a very long history of both active and pro-active defense of their customer rights. It is currently leading an international petition against the EU plans for data retention, for example. It also started case against the Dutch government over wiretapping.

In the past it has on a regular bases stood up to defend their customer rights, including a long running spat against the Church of Scientology and a case of freedom of expression even if it is about derailing German trains.

Last but not least XS4All actively sues spammers (sorry, Dutch only).

I have been to the Netherlands to a seminair and you have to read this: http://www.dataretentionisnosolution.com/

Its about a new law (they will decide in October 2005) in which they want to decide that the government can store all internet traffic and phone traffic for a year at least!!!!

You can sign a petition, I hope as much people as possible do it!!!

BBQ