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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!?
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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.
I think you missed the point. Encryption of your local files is a moot point if the data being transmitted is what's being retained.
That's not to say that encrypting your files isn't a good idea, just irrelevant in this case. Use of PGP/GPG for email, however.. in this case, is a bloody well fantastic idea. If everyone you communicate with has a key pair, you just have to remember to encrypt (and, if you aren't completely braindead, sign) everything you send and you'll have one less things to worry about. Keeping your web traffic under wraps might be a little more difficult.
I just need to find a cheapass CA (or track down the requisite software to do it myself) and I'd be happy as a clam. Of course, the challenge would be convincing everyone I know to start using it, as well. Although, at least that way I could make a certificate for my own servers so that, when I eventually do get my own server up and running, I can keep all traffic using https.
Matthew G P Coe
http://mgpcoe.blogspot.com/
In The Netherlands (and also the UK), a person can be forced to assist the authorities to decrypt information (i.e. supplying them with the key). If you refuse to cooperate, you could face a hefty fine, or be put in prison (depending on whether the police, or the intelligence services give the order).
The only alternative seems to be anonymous multi-hop networks that use onion routing; in those cases, you cannot cooperate (when it's not your own communication), since you don't have the key. And on top: purely from network traffic, eavesdroppers cannot determine whether a given packet is yours or (more likely) someone elses. These networks exist, but are still in their infancy; they don't support a full /. crowd yet. So I won't mention the name here; if you're savvy enough, you'll find its name on Google (maybe) or Freenet (certainly).
The whole terrorism witchhunt has seen 1984 approach rapidly. This must be fought. If it happens anyway, at least I can sleep with a clear conscience, since I fought in the war...
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For the sake of argument, ignoring phone records, etc and just focusing on the internet.
There are over 100 million broadband users in the EU - plus countless milllions of dialup users - but we'll ignore the dialuppers too for the moment.
Now I download about 300Gb/year and upload about half that. So we'll say about 400Gb/year of traffic. Now I know that they only have to log the traffic and not store everything I download/upload (although that would make for a more amusing example) so let's make it 1/10th of that actually required to log all my data (40Gb).
That's 3.7 Exabytes of data per year for all the broadband users in the EU alone. Assuming they haven't changed the proposal too much since I last read it, they required storage of data for 7 years, that's ~26 Exabytes of storage required to hold all this stuff.
How the hell do you find anything of use in 26 exabytes of data?
95% of the terrorism I read about lately are the paranoid laws by the (uber)governments of the world on it's own citizens.
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.
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!