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EU Moves Forward with Data Retention
KokoBonobo writes "
euobserver.com reports on controversial proposals to require EU service operators to retain data about telephone calls and e-mails as part of an overall fight against crime and terrorism. The retained data would not only consist of logs, but of entire conversations and contents of the e-mails and SMS messages. This document from the European Commission's Information Society goes into further detail."
Well, if anything is going to drive people to personal encryption, this type of brain-damaged legislation will be it.
My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?
It seems that with the rapid pace of new technology and the slow pace of legislation, that this will be largely ineffective.
Already it's easy to see how existing technologies could be used to effortlessly circumvent the proposals.
"Telephone calls", does this cover Skype? Does it cover VOIP in general which is just data passing over the network and could always be wrappered, encrypted, or routed via several points (to ensure no single intermediary could capture the whole conversation).
It's great that our politicians can find ever increasing ways to enforce a climate of fear whilst wasting the monies that could help alleviate problems fced by the citizens that they represent.
Damn! Now I've posted what do I do with these mod points!?
Now I know the Belgians can speak French. If they can't communicate properly, this data retention law isn't going to help at all. What would help is for the various member states to get their act together and start working together more closely on international crimes.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
The one representative who was supposed to speak in favor of it never showed up (remember Inger Marie Sunde?), nor did she send a replacement. Now what kind of message does that send? It gives the impression of "the majority doesn't care for long-term storage of traffic data, but we don't care what the majority thinks. We're going to impose our way on you whether you like it or not."
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
"You mean we're gonna need how much disk space exactly?". "We're gonna have to invade which small nation just to get enough physical space to store all this stuff?".
Worry not, it will blow over soon enough :-)
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Hrmf. WTF are you even talking about? Something like this tried in the USA would result in a ton of out-of-work Congress folks. The EU, on the other hand, has already proven that it will vote however it wants, regardless of how the actual people in the member countries feel about things (the patent issue). That's what you get for being represented in the EU by appointees. That's also what you get for believing in the compete-with-the-US propaganda that got you the EU in the first place.
:P
Instead of storing all that data, the EU should just ask the CIA for the data nicely.
That is so cute. I can picture a nice little country peering at charts over a nice pair of granny glasses.
Seriously, get with it. The political leaders of countries wanting to join are all sold the to idea, who in those countries gets to say otherwise?
The case of the Ukraine is a great example.
The democratic movement there is about as convincing as the weapons of mass desctuction lies.
The EU is getting to be a huge economic power, and one of the appeals is having a common single market. The EU has the largest economy in the world right now, so not joining may hurt a country.
University of Washington
Student
The government will install a high resolution 24/7 webcam in your bedroom, feed all the footage over the internet and store it for ever? Just to make sure that nothing is said there that could be connected to criminal or terrosist activity. Anyway if your a good, well behaved, citizen you have nothing to worry about because you have nothing to hide, right? In my opinion we're all being held hostage by criminals and terrorist.
As well, history has repeatedly shown that it is just a very small step from storing personal information to abusing it to repress the masses. Maybe good intentions, but very dumb dumb people.
Those that are willing to trade freedom for security, will get none and deserve neither !
IANAL, but imagine a beowulf cluster of in Soviet Russia all your belong are base to us welcoming the new SCO overlords.
When I grew up, in the 70s and 80's, the eastern European countries were scorned for their obvious distrust in its own people, since copies were kept of phone conversations and letters. Still we're horrified by the vast archives of Stasi, Securitate and similar organisations. Yet, what we're about to introduce goes so much further. Is it only because it's so easy to do with electronic information that it feels OK to do so? I have a feeling that it would not be appreciated to suggest a legislation to make copies of all snail mail and store for use in fight against crime and terrorism. _ /Bjorn.
European countries have been fighting each other for as long as anyone can recall - making the countries depend on each other for sales purposes is a stroke of genius; most wars are about money/power, but nobody as lobbying for war agains a country which is a big customer of whatever product you might be selling.
-- A good compromise leaves everyone mad. --Calvin and Hobbes
95% of the terrorism I read about lately are the paranoid laws by the (uber)governments of the world on it's own citizens.
Unfortunately, with several recent laws that presumption of innocence is being deminished. Hell, Labour is even trying to take away our right to a trial by jury, and so far its made it possible to jail foreign terrorist suspects without trial, allow the prosecution to present evidence to the Judge without making that evidence available to the defence or defendant. These are jsut a few of the really bad laws recently passed.
I have a newsflash for you. You are a victim of the old trick that has been repeatedly used by national politicians to pass necessary, but painful reforms: "the EU made me do it". What they don't tell you is that they made the EU make them do it.
The so-called "democratic deficit" in the EU is a myth. The EU executive is currently shared between the European Commission and the European Council.
The Council is made of all of the elected national heads of government, or the appropriate ministers (depending on the issue).
As for the Commission, it is appointed by the heads of government, which is hardly less democratic than, for instance, the (directly elected) French President appointing a Prime Minister from the majority party in the Parliament. Moreover, just as a national government, the European Commission has to be approved by the Parliament. Remember how Mr Santer was forced to resign, or how Mr Barroso was forced to remove contested Commissioners because he'd have failed the confidence vote otherwise?
If you remember the EU software patent debacle, the non-democratic decision (i.e. not giving a flying f#ck about the EU Parliament) was made by the European Council, i.e. the government of the member states that the EU citizens themselves elected!
It is high time the disinformation stopped. While I would welcome a major increase in the Parliament's powers, the EU executive is definitely held accountable. The current situation is not a "democratic deficit", but rather excessive powers in the hand of national heads of state.
By the way, I'd trust the Commission much more than my own national government... Give me a Prodi over a Chirac or a Berlusconi any day.
The right way to treat encryption is the same way they treat safes and lockboxes.
If the police are searching your house (with a warrant) and they find a safe, there are rules about when they can and cant force you to open that safe.
The same rules should apply to any ecrypted information they find.
For example, if they have an encrypted email or file, the same rules should apply as apply to them finding a safe in your house.
As for this new data retention crap, are the cops going to pay for the huge servers and disks required to hold all this information? And the people to keep everything going?
Terrorism has lost all meaning to me now, it's unfortunate that such an awful thing has turned into nothing more then a Buzz word and an excuse for governments to spy on their own people. Everyday I hear about fighting terrorism, and people losing their privacy and rights, I feel like its getting closer and closer to 1984. If people weren't so misguidied in their fear of terrorism then the governments wouldn't have the excuses to enact these laws. Terror kills only a percentage of a percentage of what smoking does, or heart disease or AIDS. Why not take most of the money being spent on fighting terrorism and put it to use fight the REAL killers of the world population, because everyone knows, no matter how much money you through at it humans will still kill humans.
My 2 cent rant.
The Good Life
Yes, in the UK, under the RIP act, you can be sentenced to moderate jail time for not giving up your key. This is supposed to stop terrorists, child molesters and drug smugglers from using encryption.
Of course, any drug-smuggling terrorists with a penchant for child-molesting will immediately surrender the keys to incriminating information. Why would he take up to three years vacation at her Majesty's pleasure for encryption, when he could easily get 18-25 or even life for his real offences?
It's because of well thought out, useful laws like this that crime is virtually unheard of on our sunny islands! Thank you New Labour!
no taxation without representation!
Terrorism has *always* existed. It's not any worse now than 10 years ago.... I used to have the odd afternoon off school due to bomb scares (99.9% of terrorism is the fear of it not the actual action. The closest I got was when the IRA decided to do a demolition job on the local city centre on a Saturday afternoon.. I was about half a mile away.. spent the afternoon quaffing beer on the exclusion perimiter and watching helicopters/police with guns surrounding the place).
There is a witchhunt - basically anyone who wants 'rights' risks being thrown in jail without and representation or right to a trial. This situation would never have been allowed a few years ago but under the 'terrorism' laws you can be arressted for anything they decide to dream up.
Sure. Terrorism is real. But we are reacting in irrational ways. The ways we react do in fact only make the most sense if either we're ruled by incompetent asshats that are out of touch with reality, or the asshats that rule us have a different agenda they don't disclose.
Stop the brainwash