Digital Surveillance for EC Governments

Joel Rowbottom writes: "The Council of the European Union (the 15 EU governments) is about to back the demands of EU "law enforcement agencies" for full access to all telecommunications data to be written into all Community legislation in the future, and for existing laws to be re-examined - a move that is even more far-reaching than the decision to sign up to the FBI plan for the interception of telecommunications. At the centre is the issue of a seven-year period of data retention. There's a lot more about it at statewatch.org including an up-to-date store of relevant documents." The BBC and the Register have articles about this. Both news articles mention this seven-year data retention period, but I don't see it in any of the recent documents, which only discuss general "requirements" for law enforcement, such as tapping and access to calling records. From what I'm reading, law enforcement seems to be concerned about getting rid of the requirements to erase data about communications traffic (under the EU privacy laws) rather than creating affirmative requirements to store such data.

Comments

Re:*sigh*

[rw2]

Come on people, this information already exists in server logs across the world! It's not like they are proposing something that is novel


What they are proposing is novel (and significant) in that they are *requiring* that logging be turned on (which on many servers, for many reasons, it is not) *and* that the company spend it's time and money ensuring that the logs persist for seven years. Presumably one gets heavily fined if a backup tape goes bad!

Ok, the backup tape might be a frear mongering, but I can imagine that if a tape goes bad and the gummint finds a memo outlining to backup processes that talks about the cost of media, the half-life of the media selected *and* then chooses to go the cheap route rather than ensure that they comply with the law that a fine for a bad tape is certainly going to happen.

Slippery slope baby, slippery slope.

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Poliglut

My Answer, Give 'em What They Want

[ackthpt]

Create apps which generate bogus network traffic among sites, I.E. generate emails out of your spelling dictionary, and stuff like that. Use bots to surf, download, etc. Create extraneous garbage posts to bulletin boards..uh..like..goats.ex..uh...kinda like..uh..on slashdot...er... Well, anyway, it'll keep em hopping and maybe drive up employment in the mass storage businesses. :)

Sir, the cracker refered to a Beowulf Cluster of VIC-20 computers.
Good work, Johnson, what have searches turned up?
7.43e14 references to Beowulf Clusters on a site called Slashdot between 2000 and 2006.
Right! Shut them down and haul them in. Break out the rubber gloves, men!

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All your .sig are belong to us!