EU Data-Retention Laws Stricter Than Many People Realized

An anonymous reader writes with a snippet from the Telegraph: "A European Union directive, which Britain was instrumental in devising, comes into force which will require all internet service providers to retain information on email traffic, visits to web sites and telephone calls made over the internet, for 12 months."

Comments

Broken summary

[Norsefire]

The summary is completely broken which should be easier to notice than dupes? Anyway, it is supposed to say (from the Firehost article those to lazy to click):

"A European Union directive, which Britain was instrumental in devising, comes into force which will require all internet service providers to retain information on email traffic, visits to web sites and telephone calls made over the internet, for 12 months. Police and the security services will be able to access the information to combat crime and terrorism. Hundreds of public bodies and quangos, including local councils, will also be able to access the data to investigate flytipping and other less serious crimes. It was previously thought that only the large companies would be required to take part, covering 95 per cent of Britain's internet usage, but a Home Office spokesman has confirmed it will be applied "across the board" to even the smallest company."

Re:Broken summary

[palegray.net]

Once again, for those who didn't get the top-level reply: I think this is the story Slashdot is attempting to post.

Re:yay!

[Anthony_Cargile]

For those of you whom read the parent after slashdot fixed the problem, this is the original, unmodified summary:

"A European Union directive, which Britain was instrumental in devising, comes into force which will require all internet service providers to retain a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/5105

Yeah, they forgot a few basic HTML tokens.

Re:40,000 TB of stored emails over 12 months.

[Halo1]

Data retention is optional in mainland Europe

No, it's required in the entire EU by the directive. However, the directive does not lay down many limits, but mainly imposes some minima.

As a result, law enforcement agencies in many countries have been having constant wet dreams ever since and are pushing with all their might to extend the national implementations (massively) beyond those minima. While even those minima would already have made the STASI green with envy...

BBC News link

[azzy]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7985339.stm

TFD

[areYouAHypnotist]

The text of the directive is available (External links in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_2006/24/EC) for everyone to draw his own conclusions. For the most part I find it pretty reasonable. ISPs and telcos probably already store this type of information for their own purposes. It also limits the detention period (at least six months, less than two years).

Re:This bit intrigues me

[Anonymous Coward]

For those not getting the British jokes:

• Flytipping is a British term for illegally dumping waste somewhere other than an authorised landfill
• Quango is an acronym for QUAsi Non-Governmental Organisation

Re:40,000 TB of stored emails over 12 months.

[Halo1]

When the EU directive was implemented in Germany, guess what changed for my ISP? Absolutely nothing, because they recorded everything the law requested already.

Previously such data all was protected by the privacy directive and its implementations, which meant that it had to be destroyed as soon as it was no longer necessary (e.g., to deal with spamming complaints or for billing purposes), and could not be made available to anyone except under very strict conditions (like having a court order or so).

With the directive/laws coming into effect, law enforcement agencies (and others) are pushing to turn all of this data into massive pools in which they can go on fishing expeditions, or at the very least they want to be able to trawl through it in the context of any "investigation" (no matter what about -- nevermind that the directive was of course pushed through with sob stories about kidnapped children and terrorists). This is no different in Germany.

Of course, subsequently that idiocy got challenged and largely curtailed by the German Constitutional Court.

People being all up in arms about it and acting all concerned, doesn't change the fact, that the EU directive doesn't actually accomplish much beyond legislating the present state into continuation.

Whatever makes you feel complacent in doing nothing and in anonymously wining about those who do (and who try to make sure that you can continue doing so)...

Re:40,000 TB of stored emails over 12 months.

[Shakrai]

Surveillance, once implemented, has never in history been cut without social upheaval.

Time for social upheaval then.... oh wait, American Idol is on, can we do it after?