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EU Sues Sweden, Demands ISP Data Retention
Death Metal writes "The EU passed the Data Retention Directive years ago, a law that demands ISPs and search engines hold onto data long enough to help the cops (but not long enough to cause privacy problems). But Sweden never passed it into national law, and the European Commission has now sued the country to make sure a bill appears."
Hehe, a bit funny considering the background. This is because the EU now noticed that ISP's are actually now not wanting to do any retention in Sweden, in turn due to the new IPRED law. This is a way for them to partially dodge that law by getting less chances of being able to report users sharing copyright infringing work. The idea is that as their users are reported, they have hopefully already deleted the log entries. Why they are wanting to do that is in turn out of competition reasons. No ISP in Sweden want to be "the ISP where you can more easily get caught for copyright infringement when sharing files". You can read more about the case for one of those ISP's, Bahnhof, here.
OK, I went off on a tangent there. What I think is funny is that the EU is only now paying attention and noticing Sweden didn't adopt that law. :-p It's so apparent that this is in response to all the more ISP's not caring for it, not because they have a check on what Sweden is doing. Or maybe they just don't care until certain laws are dodged in practice out of minimizing bureaucracy. It's hard to tell if it's due to incompetence or bureaucracy, but it's either of them.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
As an European citizen I just want to point out to all non-EU friends of /. that this is just a completely normal and standard procedure - it doesn't depend on which law or which country, but if a European law directive is not formed into national laws by the governments/parliaments, the EU automatically sues the non-conforming member states. Happens all the times, on all issues, punishment is normally the fine for each more day passing by.
Under the EU treaties a european directive has to be implemented as national law by all members to whom it is adressed, normally within a year after it has been passed, member countries can be excepted from this rule, so that they have more time to implement it as a national law. Bu they do not have a choice after that. The strange and noteworthy thing is, that a european directive as such has a direct effect for all member countries (regardless of national implementation) and courts, especially the higher courts, should consider it in their rulings. The national implementation is only an integration in the respective national legal systems.What happens here is nothing unusual, its standard procedure "On 1 May 2008 1,298 such cases open before the Court" s.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Directive So: nothing to see here, move on.
Actually, the European Parliament seems to be pretty resistant to bribary compared to the rest of the Western world.
The problem is usually with the EU Council of Ministers who are the 'unelected' representatives of each member state and tend to ignore the Parliament if they don't like their decisions (As they did with the software patents issue.)
Thankfully the Parliament can overturn CoM decisions with a 2/3 majority and often do if they feel they've been screwed.
* There is no set procedure on leaving the EU
* Sweden does not have the Euro as its currency
* The free trade agreements does not hinge on membership
* Yes, the whole commission bit needs some serious looking over
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* Appointed indirectly by an elected body? Sort of like the electoral college? That puts the US in a very interesting light.
Sweden has already accepted more Iraqi refugees than the rest of the EU, in the last few years. In fact, the Swedish municipality of Södertälje (population: 82 000) has accepted more Iraqi refugees than the whole of the United States. http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=552&catID=17