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Endorse EDRI's Statement Against Data Retention
Ville Oksanen writes "Privacy International (PI) and European Digital Rights (EDRI) have published their joint answer to the consultation on mandatory data retention. The European Commission asked for public comments on a proposed retention regime across Europe between 12 and 36 months for all traffic data generated by using fixed and mobile telephony and Internet. As Statewatch puts it: 'This is a proposal so intrusive that Ashcroft, Ridge and company can only dream about it, exceeding even the U.S. Patriot Act.'
EDRI and PI are currently collecting endorsements from organizations and companies for their stamement here. This is unfortunately not enough to stop the process - expecially more should be done in the member states, which ultimately decide the fate of the proposal. So contact your local politicians today!"
The ability to record our movements, intrests, communications will in the future make it possible to really control the population from itself.
No surprise here. Seeing hoow privacy issues are sought to be handled in the US and how more and more of US (mal)practices come over to us (i.e. Europe) every day, there's nothing to be surprised at.
What we need to do is hold our ground and not let these things happen. Same holds for software patents and the like.
Freedom also means you are free to stand up and defend your rights. What we don't defend today may be lost tomorrow. And yes, that's too late. It's always easier [revent than to abolish later.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Oh, rest assured, I'm sure that US.government already has these ideas. My guess is their either waiting for the election to be over, or for the next crisis to shoehorn it in.
Isn't it amazing how all this crap gets put through, even though most of the voters are against the proposal the politicians that are supposed to be our representatives in parliment just don't care and put it through anyway.
They keep up this illusion that we are a 'free' country, living in a 'democracy' but things like this just show how bad things really are. Used to be they would snoop and we all know they did, but they pretended they didn't for sake of negative publicity. Now they (the government) are showing how little the voters views really count. They don't need to worry about what we want, they just swing the terrorism card and pretend its all for our good, Big brother 'looking after our best intrests.' How nice of them.
If at first you DON'T succeed, Skydiving is NOT for YOU!!
I can't help wondering how they are going to implement this just from the related information point of view. Sure GSM traffic seems trackable via the standards IMSI/IMSE. But how are they going to relate internet traffic to an individual. The would also need to capture DHCP logs etc, etc. It might be easy to capture and store all the data but without something to pull it all together, its could be just a waste of hard disk space
Better start to keep your own detailed records of everything.
Log who visits what websites on your computer, every bank transfer you make keep careful notes, you may be required to prove everything you ever did.
Just the small fact that the Internet doesn't know borders. Send mail to a European server? Buy something from a Europe over the Net? Your messages and transactions get stored. IIRC European ISPs are vehemently against this, for obvious reasons, and law enforcement isn't thrilled either. It's populist scaremongering politicians who are behind this crap.
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...in the European country of your choice, too.
The main driving force behind these kind of proposals are mainly the center and right of the political spectrum. Just as Bolkenstein (former comissioner and right wing liberal(dutch 'VVD')) introduced the dreaded software patents, so will other right winged.
The amount of energy put into the actions to counteract the european legislators (just like the action against software patents) is huge, but in the end things usually pay off only half, or not at all.
By using your right to choose and elect, and choosing based upon the decisions made by those politicians (pro- or con- the issues you are for/against) you can deal with this thing preemptively.
In the meantime, try to live with the harsh reality but never forget who put this in your lap.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Since /. is US centric, and this appears to be an EU matter, why would they give a rat's ass what most of us have to say on the matter?
Well, I thought the tag line was News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. Nothing about the US in there.
Technology is trans-national. What happens in Taiwan will influence the prices of equipment in the US. /. to the US, what a silly idea.
The Internet and its legal framework are even more trans-national. When European sites store their visitors data, they will store US visitors too. When the US strengthens its anti-piracy rules, Australians take heed.
Limiting
IMO, this law proposal will fail for simple economic reasons. If they really want it mandatory to store ALL traffic data, that would make internet infrastructure more expensive by several orders of magnitude. If business depends heavily on internet infrastructure, and it's several orders of magnitude cheaper elsewhere, business might go there instead.
People will not be upset for being snooped on, but for having to pay too much.
The consultation document itself uses the term "traffic data", but nowhere do I see an explicit indication that this refers to the contents of messages. Instead, they seem to be talking about retaining connection logs also after they have been used for billing purposes. As far as I know, operators don't generally retain message contents merely for billing.
Oh, Slashdot, and slashdotters... never read what is in the linked documents and you're just fine here :-)
... law enforcement authorities are concerned that some data may not always be stored by all electronic communications operators to the same extent as they were in
;-)
Now seriously, look what is in the proposal:
Because of changes in technologies, business models and service offerings
recent years. These traffic data would hence not be available for these public authorities
when needed.
As a professional at CRM Data Warehouse I can only confirm that this data is being lawfully collected already and was collected since the long time. Where were EDRI looking at, all this time?
The thing is Telcos do not have processing power and storage to store all the data they may not need at all, so they do not store anymore. That's what the proposal is about.
This is my own opinion and not of my employer.
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.
Gigabit university connection. 1Gbit/sec is 3 Petabytes per year of storage or about 20000 large harddrives. Right, yup, impossible.
10 years ago, you could store a megabyte for 1$. Today, you can store a gigabyte for 1$. Storing the connection logs for quite some time is already doable.
In 10 years, you can store a terrabyte for 1$, and the costs of storing the connection logs will be trivial. Storing all voice traffic will be affordable, and storing all Internet traffic may be doable.
In 20 years, you can store a petabyte for 1$. The cost of storing all voice traffic, globally, will be trivial. Storing all Internet data traffic will be doable; it may even be cheap.
If we poo-poo the law proposals because it can't be done now, we will regret it when the laws become enforcable. It may take less than 10 years.
the bandwidth your average guy uses will be 100 times what it is today. you see my point?
It certainly is, and while maybe not every politician involved understands the distinction, I think it's explained reasonably well in the summary, right at the beginning of the consultation document:
The key phrase here is "generate", indicating that the communications generate traffic data, they don't constitute it. While we should be wary of covert attempts to spy also on traffic contents, this doesn't seem to be a case of such.
Or, you run a free service of some kind, sending no bills at all. What about e-mail between students at different universities; should university mail server logs be retained as well under this regime? What about mail within the same university, or mail between staff members of the same company? The logs usually end up in the same files on the company mail server whether the mail is internal or external, and all their network provider sees is a stream of IP packets.
It's like asking the power utility to make a note in their logs every time somebody switches on or off an electrical appliance in their home. I think that information might be just as useful in the fight against terrorism as two-year old traffic data is. If I can't get any sense out of all the junk mail sent to me by people I have never heard of, how could anybody else?
It's inevitable - a society that's set up to give the highest value to money, laws that exist on paper only, no principles other than concentration and accumulation of objects...
Confrontation between those with the capital - and weapons/controlling positions they acquired it with - and the rest of the population is only going to increase. A lot.
We shouldn't be surprised at all to see violence grow in both the US and Europe, which was convenienty exported to the rest of the world. It can't be "managed" forever.
I chose to align and work more with the people in the humanist movement - but everyone should fight somewhere.
http://www.google.com/search?q=humanist+movement
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Do not forget the value of disinformation. Miss-spell a name, change a birthdate, for USA, make an error in your SSN. Your mother should have hundreds of maiden names, make gratutious, meaningless comments such as, "yes, her monkey is friendly but saves his shit for making fertilizer rather than feeding it to the possums and so is causing great ecological impact more severe than requisite dog poo collection and wishes he could bring this gun to the debate and show us who's the real man"
Oh, and tumble that MAC address!
1. Have you ever gone over the speed limit in a car? Do you want to be monitored 24/7 so if you do, the government can simply issue you a remote fine?
No, I don't want to be monitored, but..it WOULD be fair.
2. Do you mind having government cameras in your home 24/7? How about in your bedroom, shower or toilet? After all, you have nothing to hide. Right? If you don't want cameras in your home, you must be conspiring against the government. Right?
I don't see the connection between cameras in the house and a national ID card as an example. I guess it's a decent point, but a little alarmist sounding (conspiracy theorist like)
3. Why is it that it's ok to have citizens watched 24/7, yet you can't see the footage and for some reason, no politicians seem to be surveilled?
I don't like this argument either. Who would argue that it's not ok for the police to watch criminals? Likewise, if the police was watching you, would you want anyone to be able to download the video off the internet? I don't think so.. Likewise, politicians are probably the most recorded people around.
4. Why shouldn't the insurance companies know about your entire medical, driving and social records, all the time, so they can dynamically adjust your risk status and increase payments as necessary?
Would probably be more fair that way...
5. Why do you need a secret ballot to vote for your politicians?
That's a decent one.
6. Shouldn't the politicians be doing your bidding, not ruling you?
Hmm.. not sure about this one. I elect a politician to lead, not do my bidding. I don't really think that's the point of electing people to office.
You're crazy. Are you telling me the rich and powerfull won't get a free card out? You seem to forget that it happens in 1984, noone controls the elite.
The thing is, the powerfull can pretty much disregard the law and it's consequences as is, they could pretty much buy out censorship of their crimes for matters of national security or some bullshit.
And how would you feel if every desire you have is analised for its conformance with society, feeling that anyone could pick on you for every fault, knowing that your deepest feelings would be scrutinezed (sp?) by anyone.
That is not a society a human being can live on. We were made to have privacy, it is part of our sanity check. I understand what you are saying, but that is giving up on the human race's ability to adapt and evolve. It's not acceptable.
We can finally start the revolution. Not a communist/socialist one or anything, it's time for a DEMOCRATIC revolution.
It's fine for police to watch criminals. I'm not a criminal (last I checked), so why do they need to watch me? Besides, I'd much rather that everyone was able to access footage of my movements in a public place, so that any decision made by the police (or whoever) could be scrutinised by disinterested parties, than the current situation where the footage goes into this big black box that no one can reasonably vet...
Sorry, but if you genuinely believe that, you've already lost. Politicians serve us, and are there to enact the will of the people. That's the whole point of a democracy. At least, in my opinion
The information flow jammed all the available channels. Since everyone was under surveillance, it was almost as if there was no surveillance at all. I thought this will be a meaningful lessons for all the powers that be... but it took roughtly 15 years for European politicians to repeat the same mistake.
Of course they learned their lesson. Store it digitally, have a bunch of computers connect the dots. That way, you can run a huge surveilance operation with relatively few people on the job. The problem of huge paper archives was that it'd be a full-time job for half the people to control the other half.
One might hope that they learned a few other lessons too, but I wouldn't take any bets on it. It is much the same as the US: "It is okay for us to do stasiesqe surveilance because we're the good guys". It is a slippery slope, and opposition is met with: "We're trying to fight terrorists/pedos/criminals/[enemy of the day], why do you oppose us?" I suspect initially many of those working for say Hitler, Stalin, Mao etc.etc. in the early stages were idealists, who thought they were doing good. Gathering all information, all power to them, because they were the ones most fit to wield it...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
No, you elect a politican to initiate force on your behalf. Anything your "leader" will do and possibly could do will be accomplished through force, not voluntary association.
Personal info is implicitly copyrighted. It is published or transferred solely to a single counterparty, for a transaction of a single purpose, unless expressly specified otherwise. Copyrighted info cannot be distributed or retained beyond the completion of that transaction, whether successful or unsuccessful. Write your lawyers and political representatives. It's time individuals claimed our copyrights to protect our liberty with the force corporations have siezed theirs.
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make install -not war
I was just wondering - do you think they are also planning on scanning or photocopying regular mail envelopes??