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."

Comments

Tools

[Apathetic1]

Well, if anything is going to drive people to personal encryption, this type of brain-damaged legislation will be it.

Re:Tools

[casuist99]

Judging by your username (Apathetic), I would think you'd realize the one fundamental fact about the public (in general): We're apathetic about things we SHOULD care about.

We can shout at people that the government can read our email and chat logs, but very few people will make the move to encryption. People are apathetic and lazy - unless encrypted email and chat is enabled BY DEFAULT in the next version of email and chat programs, people won't do it.

Rules are made to be broken... VOIP loophole?

[buro9]

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!?

my own direct experience on this topic

[tuxette]

I participated in an open hearing (in Norwegian only, sorry) on this very topic last year in Oslo. Participants included representatives from telecom companies, top IT companies, government agencies, interest groups, etc. While there was sympathy for the need to fight terrorism, nobody was in favor of long-term storage of traffic data. The reasons varied, all from privacy concerns to costs to contractual expectations. Nobody was able to see how this long-term data storage would be useful for fighting terrorism. Yes, they understood the alleged theories, but were able to slam these theories with real world examples.

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."

I find it all quite amusing really....

[B747SP]

IIRC, this isn't the first time someone senior and clueless got it in their heads that it would be a great idea to just store everything that ever passes across a given network. They tend to go really quiet right after someone sits them down in a quiet room and spells out a few of the 'practical' details of what they think they're going to do...

"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 :-)

A Subject

[Anonymous Coward]

95% of the terrorism I read about lately are the paranoid laws by the (uber)governments of the world on it's own citizens.

Re:EU 1984?

[killbill!]

The EU is about as democratic as the former Soviet Union. The European Parliament is almost powerless, and the national governments are almost powerless against new European legislation.

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.

Re:Tools - But Even Then...

[kraut]

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!