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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."
This law itself, in it's current form, nullifies the newly passed IPRED law.
The law says that stored information can only be requested by the police or prosecutors if a serious crime has been committed (or the suspicion of a serious crime).
Hence a third party like RIAA cannot request information to file a suit according to the IPRED law.
Another law in Sweden, currently active, says that all identity information MUST immediately be DESTROYED when it is no longer required for completion of business transactions.
That's some fine politics there, Lou!
Sues Sweden? And what if they don't obey?
That's a really good question. I'm guessing there's something for this in those 10000+ pages of international treaties that form the EU.
What's interesting though, that this is the only law they react so harshly to. They usually warn a couple of times, prod gently, give deadlines, give more deadlines, and not take it to court without warning. Of course those are laws not directly related to their emerging police state.
The interesting thing is that Sweden was one of the 4 countries that proposed the law (together with Ireland, France and the UK). It really drove its adoption hard, even though the first drafts of the text proposed by these countries were completely unworkable.
It took almost two years before the final text was drafted. The current version is much more readable and understandable than the first version. In the end a couple of unlikely countries took the lead in drafting the text. Even though some of these countries weren't very positive on the idea of having a data retention law, the civil servants sat down to create something that was what their political masters wanted and was technically realizable in practice.
Things that were for instance excluded were the requirements to log on a per packet basis the source and destination or to identify for http which adresses were visited.
How do I know? I was there and took part in the negotiations in the EU Council Working Group from day one to day last.
Sues Sweden? And what if they don't obey?
That's a really good question. I'm guessing there's something for this in those 10000+ pages of international treaties that form the EU.
What's interesting though, that this is the only law they react so harshly to. They usually warn a couple of times, prod gently, give deadlines, give more deadlines, and not take it to court without warning. Of course those are laws not directly related to their emerging police state.
Sweden has recently passed the IPRED law where a copywrite holder can request from the court for the ISP to hand over IP information about their customers if they are suspected of illigal file sharing. So basically Copyright holders are the police now. Or something like that.
so what happened.
http://www.thelocal.se/19478/20090515/
Several ISP's decided not to store their information about their customers because they did not want to hand over their customers information to 3rd parties.
So now Sweden is going to create a new law where they force ISP's to save the user's data (see article above).
So why is EU putting pressing the issue by sueing. Its because these copywrite lobbiests are trying to save their business model by getting involved in politics and changing laws everywhere.
EU elections are on june 7th. Im voting for the pirate party. Not because I necessarily want them to win but I would like them to get some seats in the parlement so they can question some of these issues that are invading on everyones privacy.
I could go on forever. And the funny thing is. Nobody is in favor of these laws. So why are they getting passed. I thought these were democratic nations.
I've been telling that to people since 2001. I'm a statistician. Actually, I went through the hassle to actually figure out the chance to be killed one way or another. Terrorist attacks are very close to lightning striking and some forms of freak accidents that land you a well deserved Darwin Award.
In a nutshell, if you're afraid of terrorists, never ever board a plane or even dare to use a car. Statistically, you're already dead when you enter a car (if you consider terrorist attacks a likely form of death).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.