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EU Approves Data Retention

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the finally-someone-is-being-data-retentive dept.

submanifold writes "The EU have ratified rules that will force ISP's and other telecommunication companies to retain data for two years. This data includes the time, date and locations of both mobile and landline calls (as well as whether or not they were answered) along with logs of internet activity and email. Apparently the content itself would not be accessible, merely the data concerning it. However, despite being touted as an anti-terrorist measure, the record industry has already admitted interest in aquiring such data."

6 of 350 comments (clear)

  1. I am going to be rich! by Nichotin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Heh, I guess buying stocks in storage related companies would be a good idea now :)

    --
    Dvorak on Doomtech
  2. encrypted proxies by brontus3927 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I guess thats a good reason to start using encrypted proxies.

    --
    Free MacMini
  3. Phew, that's a relief by slushbat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now we should be able to round up all of the terrorists within a few minutes, and all will be well in the garden again. I am so lucky to be looked after by such wise leaders. Seriously, I bet you will be able to count the number of terrorists caught by this on the fingers of one foot.

    --

    Don't put off until tomorrow what you can leave until the day after.

  4. Re:Volumes of Data by castoridae · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And how's it going to be protected? This is another ChoicePoint leak just waiting to happen.

  5. Make the records publically available. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You may think it, um, counterintuitive.

    But the _reason_ they want these is to maintain social/political power over people. An elite with privileged access to all that information can control society. In a free society, either everyone should have the communications metadata, or no-one: It's unbalanced information availability that would give the police power to become the classic Big Brother. I'm a lot safer if everyone knows I have a particular embarassing sexual inclination or whatever than if only a small, powerful subset knows.

    See David Brin's book "The Transparent Society: Will Technology force use to choose between privacy and freedom?"

  6. Re:Filesharing and this law by Oersoep · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "logs with ports and IPs"

    No ports, no IP's. The folks who came up with this don't think that far.

    They think that:
    - e-mail is just like phone
    - spam does not exist
    - ISP's only handle private traffic
    - ISP's handle ALL traffic, and have full access to it
    - Only EU citizens use ISPs in Europe
    - Encryption does not exist
    - No-one has his own mailserver
    - No-one is going to try to make money by offering tunneling services to non-EU countries
    - Terrorists are dumber than they are

    It's not that they want every ISP to scan all packets. They're just thinking like lusers. They think internet is managable.

    Their plan sucks. It doesn't work, it's leaking like a raincloud, it's unconstitutional for a lot of member states, and they bombard ISPs with costs, work and responsibilities they never asked for and they KNOW is bullcrap.

    It's absurd.