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Unfortunately, the commission has chosen to ignore it in favour of pandering to US security paranoia, see here . It will be interesting to see if they ultimately get away with it.

Why start ridicule people who are "conspiracists" and think people in power would do anything to stay in power (or get more)? Have you guys forgotten ww2? Ever heard of romania? Russia? Big centralized power structures tend to develop in the same way over and over again. Now we (europeans) have Schengen. Do some google'ing, and you'll find stuff like this or this. You could proberbly find even better stuff, I dont spend to much time on this issues myself(though maybe I should). I do think I know that these structures of unlimited power, and little to none opennes(remember that someone have to have pushed that agenda you know. Why would anyone do that? Why the secrecy??) are dangerous.
Read some history books.

How about -

Indymedia

BBC

or for some partial journalism / general questioning and sometimes odd, but certainaly not bland corp media

Michael Moore

DisInfo

then there are specialist sites for different topics -

Cryptome

Statewatch

Summary:

Statewatch's analysis shows that there are "grave gaps in civil liberties protection":
- there are no grounds for refusing to execute a request on human rights grounds
- there are no limits as to what data can be exchanged where member states allow for the retention of data on all crimes, not just the 32 listed
- there is no reference to supervisory authorities on data protection
- there is no reference to the individual's right to correct, delete, block data nor compensation for misuse or for related judicial review
- no reference to controls on the copying of data
- no rules for checking on the admissibility of data searches

Here is a leaked draft of a similar framework (proposal) on data retention in Europe, and here is Statewatch analysis of it - I believe the analysis is good reference for Canada/US as well. It seems these things are happening all over the world at same time, so maybe the kick-off to start working on these was made in some multi-national meeting (interpol, maybe). Anyway, it is rather alarming.

Here is a leaked draft of a similar framework (proposal) on data retention in Europe, and here is Statewatch analysis of it - I believe the analysis is good reference for Canada/US as well. It seems these things are happening all over the world at same time, so maybe the kick-off to start working on these was made in some multi-national meeting (interpol, maybe). Anyway, it is rather alarming.

cell coverage can be large; many tens of miles in the obscure areas where demand is low, and shrink them down when demand is high (cities). 3G cells are reall y small BTW. With an octagonal antenna array you can pinpoint a phone to an octet of a cell...I dont know if the systems bother to record the octet.

The proposal to retain all this data was that old NCIS document that snuck out onto the net, probably via ISPs, for some national data warehouse, keeping stuff on spinning media for seven years. See statewatch.

BTW I dont think they'd bother to catch this particular motorbike; more insidious is they can use phone velocity to work out your speed down, say, the M5 over an afternoon. Like how in belgium pre-schengen they used to tell you off at the border if you had crossed the country in less time than was legal.

Not only ISPs; all telecoms. All data. Seven years. The EU draftsman, Marco Capatto, is not happy with the data collection/retention clause, and has written a report on the proposal-- an interesting read. The problem is that this is a step away from the various governments independently deciding how to handle data collection and retention; the bill forces them to enact legislation that collects and retains in accordance with this bill. stop1984 has issued a press release on the subject.

Council of Europe - Convention on Cybercrime

The US (along with the UK govt) was actually instrumental in developing this policy with the European and other states in the Council of Europe . The Convention is developed from an idea the FBI were punting around in the early nineties.

It should be noted that the Council of Europe is not part of the EU and should not be confused with the European Council. Don't believe anyone who tells you this came from Brussels - This is a case of the nation states going oustide the EU (with the US, Canada and South Africa and Japan) to make an agreement, then propose it as legislation via the Commission (EU governmental heads together) for the European Parliament to approve. I'm actually glad there are some MEPs with some wits about them and a conscience to try to oppose this.

News just in: G8 Justice and Interior Ministers are pushing for this too. Surprise!

While there does not appear to be a direct equivalent of the EFF in the UK/EU, one organisation that springs to mind is Statewatch, which is dedicated to monitoring civil liberties (including electronic) in the EU.

Hopefully organisations like these will stop abuses of power such as the EU Telecommunications Directive (news story ZDNET) which calls for ISP and Telecomms to retain communication records for 7 (yes, seven) years.

Some people are also rather annoyed with Echelon, the Menrith Hill based UK-US monitoring centre which listens to some/many/all (depending on who you talk to!) calls and email within the UK. Personally, I have a soft spot for it, since it really annoys the French: ZDNET story

On a semi-related note, the Campaign for FOI is campaiging for more open access to information in the UK.

On an insane note, these people Project Freedom are determined to expose MI5/MI6/CIA use of mind control on socialists and other undesirables...

The difference here is that when the govt wants to read an email and sees that the official backdoors aren't working this will be a reasonable indication that the contents of the email are illegal.

I fail to see how this holds - The European Parliament issued a report (see this Irish Times article for a discussion) in response to Echelon encouraging citizens to use Encryption. Remember, we are not all US citizens. Some of us in the "western world" still adhere to Article 12 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights which I reproduce here:

Article 12.

• 
  

  No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

  
  

So if I, as a law-abiding European citizen, use Encryption as a means of supporting my human rights according to the United Nations, and in direct response to a recommendation by my extended government (in the EU), the US government can assume I am a criminal?

It has been said here before, and I'll say it again. Many US citizens need to take their heads out of the sand and realise that there is a whole other (civilised!) world out there that doesn't "pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America."

The EU is a remarkably inconsistent body; in general they act in the best interests of the people (according to my definition of 'best interests', of course), but they do have a tendency to promote pretty oppressive legislation when the mood takes them; Enfopol for example. A trawl through Statewatch is worth a read if you've got a few minutes.