Slashdot Mirror
Europe Moves To Track Phone and Net Use
An anonymous reader writes with a NYTimes piece on the early moves by European governments to implement an EU data retention directive. The governments of Germany and the Netherlands are initially proposing much more stringent programs than the EU directive requires. For example, the German proposal "would essentially prohibit using false information to create an e-mail account, making the standard Internet practice of creating accounts with pseudonyms illegal." The Times notes that, early days as it is, nevertheless some people involved in the issue are "concerned about a shift in policy in Europe, which has long been a defender of individuals' privacy rights."
This idea dates back to begin 2000. At that time the UK national criminal inteligence service argued for it. In a plan that I dont think was intended for publication it concluded: "There is a convergence of issues. Communications data is of crucial importance to Law Enforcement, and the Intelligence and Security Agencies but our needs are in conflict with existing legislation arising from data protection provisions and ECHR. In addition, there is significant commercial pressure to delete data. There are also significant public policy issues to address. It is an area requiring prompt attention."
Thats "European Convention on Human Rights". It has an article on how invasions upon someones privacy should be proportional. Keeping traffic data on everyone in Europe could be considdered disproportional.
Somehow the proponents forgot to mention that bit when they lobbied for this idea. First at the G8, then at the EU commision. The procedure the commision used for this legislation would have kept the decision out of the EU parlaiment. This is where the accusation of "policy laundering" comes from. The pressure to pass legislation increased after the Madrid train bombings, leading some people to mistake this law for a reaction to terrorism or something. I dont know why the text always had to mention it was directed at "terrorism and serious crime", isn`t terrorism a serious crime? Proponents were fearmongering using very scary crimes that were solved using traffic data. (So why the new legislation if you can solve crimes...?) And everyone was saying that the bill, which would go to the telco`s as NCIS had first suggested, would be that high.
The EU parlaiment argued is should get a say, so its civil liverties commisions got to work and... then the two big party blocks reached a deal behind closed doors. This was done under the threat from the commision to pass legislation without any input from parlainment. They can do that, the procedure is explained in this map of the codecision procedure. I am not kidding, thats the real thing. And the threat was to stay outside of that map... anyway. The version that was passed allowed national governments some freedom in setting their legislation so some countries will be less bad.
The standard justifications of fighting terrorism and child pornography are total bullshit. The real reason behind creepy and anti-democratic proposals like this are tracking of political dissidents. A simple proof is the fact that such controversial proposals are being discussed by some "representatives" to begin with while the vast majority of citizens are strongly opposed to them.