Slashdot Mirror
Law Requires Italian Web Cafes to Record ID
Armadni General writes "CNN is reporting that a new Italian law requires that all businesses offering public internet access, such as web cafes, to identify and record all customers. While supporters of this law trumpet its anti-terrorism potential, still others see no such advantage and bemoan this invasion of personal privacy. 'They must be able, if necessary, to track the sites visited by their clients. [...] Contents of people's e-mail is, however, supposed to remain private and can only be made available to law enforcement through a court order. Italy also obliges telecommunications companies to keep traffic data and European ministers agreed last week to require the carriers to retain records of calls and e-mails for a maximum of two years. The European Parliament's two largest groups endorsed the data retention initiative on Wednesday despite complaints from privacy advocates and telecoms, and the full body is expected to adopt a bill next week.'"
Perhaps one or two virus authors could have been caught. Maybe, and then probably not. But today, with all those open wireless networks, the law is pointless. It only affects the poorest people, those who need email, or are trying to find a job online, but don't have a computer at home.
It seems to have an out of proportion effect on our lives for the damage it currently causes. This is not to belittle the victims, but we are letting something that has miniscule effect on the populace as a whole CONTROL US.
Or at least let the politicians control us through FUD. Any politician that utters the word "terrorism" along with a bill that they think "needs" to get passed to "protect" us should be voted out ASAP anyway.
But imagine if nations like the US spent their kind of anti-terrorism money on, something basic, like national healthcare. Would that have saved or benefited more lives than "fighting the war on terrorism?"
This law has been around for at least one year, possibly more.
It got passed after a terrorist group who killed two Italian senior civil servants (Marco Biagi in 2002 and Massimo d'Antona in 1999) used an internet cafe at the Rome main train station to send messages to Italian newspapers claiming responsibility for the assassinations.
Generally, this law was ignored, partly because the terrorists mentioned above (the last survivors of the Red Brigades, a major communist group thoroughly defeated during the eighties) were quickly rounded up and arrested.
But when it turned out that the Islamic terrorists responsible for the 2004 Atocha Station bombing in Spain (over 200 dead) also used internet cafe's to co-ordinate their actions, policemen started to go round internet cafe's threatening them with closure and prosecution if they did not keep records of the people visiting them.
Needless to say, this law is completely useless. If you want to preserve your anonimity when in Italy, go to the smaller places. Most do not bother checking your ID card and have no CCTV, contrary to the big places (which are usually run by Telecom Italia). But make sure you have a Knoppix bootdisc because very few use any antivirus and their PC are full of malware.
Sadly, my country is not famous for its respect of civil liberties. The state and the police often abuse their power and do not miss the opportunity offered by someone abusing the system to further extend their powers to intrude into people's privacy.
And instead of protesting and ask for a more just society, people take the easy route and try to get around the law whenever possible. It's all screwed up.
"Engineering a crisis" does not necessarily mean planting bombs. It can mean training extremists, over decades, perhaps to fight wars in places like Afghanistan, and then when these extremists turn and attack their original sponsors, leaving the doors open. See the BBC documentary, "the Power of Nightmares" for a good analysis of how both sides (western and islamic extremists) have created conflict in order to hold onto power.
The most convincing argument I've heard against the conspiracy theories is that it would require a level of capability that is beyond the general incompetence that defines most government. I don't accept that any government possesses a sense of morality. Indeed, the state is driven by the ammoral self-interest of individuals, and without checks and balances, the state generally becomes extremist.
The current assault on European civil society is so well orchestrated that it shows how efficient the state can be when it is really motivated. So no, I don't think it's nonsense to accept the possibility that "terrorism" is so useful to the current crop of politicians that if it had not existed, they'd have gone and created it.
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Still not getting the pattern... soon, open networks will be illegal. Very soon.
Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, the answer to ever dictator's dream for total control of a free society. When they were using Russia as an excuse, they used nukes and communism as the basis for militarizing "the free world". That's out the window, now, and even tho China is technically communist, they are the nation principally funding our tax cuts, so we can't use them as the boogieman. They own us. Now, it's an eternal war against a common noun that by definition is unwinnable. How do you defeat "terror"? To keep the war going, all our new masters have to do is go "wooga wooga wooga" and everyone handcuffs themselves to a railing and tip off the new lords about all the suspicious brown people they've noticed.
1938.