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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."
Sues Sweden? And what if they don't obey?
Data retention is just a Big Brother tool.
You don't catch terrorists with this, nor pedophiles.
And yes, I emailed Osama. Now what? They don't log the contents of an email.
And if I gpg/pgp the email, what then?
Now lobbyists only have to bribe a handful of central political bastards to affect the whole of Europe.
democratic of them. Who would have thought a collection of nations creating a supranational government wouldn't infringe on the individual countries' rights?
Is this the first time the EU has sued a member state for not passing a law? If so this will be an interesting case.
Think Deeply.
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!
It's not the information that must be stored. Just Receiver/sender-information. And it's not only about data, voice calls are also included in the directive.
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!
...the three strikes law!
Wow!
Equality was the name of EU, wasn't it?
Sweden should show the middle finger to EU.
Its a pity it doesn't have any Rush Limbaughs there, one would be enough to shout hoarse about swedish nationality and violation of the same.
If i were the PM, i would take EU's action under advisement and in Brussels directly question the French about 3-strikes law which violates EU laws...
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
isn't sweden a soviergn country which can make it's own laws? i guess they would have made agreements when joining the EU and possibly face being kicked out if they don't comply, short of that whats the EU going to do besides cry? you can't invade sweden, they are just as nuts as the swiss.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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.
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.
Nope, governments are just here to create solutions. Not to check whether they are possible.
There's this old parable from good ol' soviet times. A mouse is being chased by a cat and runs up to the wise owl that everyone considered the wisest and most informed animals of the woods (let's ignore for a moment that owls eat mice, ok?). So the mouse desperately pleaded "Wise owl, the cat is chasing me and I have to escape, please tell me what to do!" The owl pondered long and hard and told the mouse "Spread your wings and fly away".
"But owl, I have no wings!" the mouse complained.
"Sorry", said the owl, "I can only offer you general solutions. And the solution works for me."
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You seem to be under the impression that law enforcement agents are infallible and not susceptible to your average human's woes.
Of course we need law enforcement. Please point out to me who said we didn't. The problem lies in the mechanics that are supposed to make sure that nobody the police is supposed to 'catch' manages to actually become a member of the police.
In my opinion, management, be it of a corporation, a state or law enforcement, is more often than not corrupt. Such laws give these people more power over the people making law enforcement just another tool for the criminals to use.
THIS is the real danger of a police state. They are using our best weapon against us. THIS is what we must be sure to never allow.
The RIAA is a good example of how this whole thing is going wrong. Remember, all our laws are built upon a set of morals. We say it is wrong to kill. Therefore, manslaughter, murder and the like are covered by our laws. Yet quite a few 'modern' societies think its okay to have a death penalty.
In RIAA's case they argue that copying their products and making them available for free is theft. Many people might agree with that sentiment at first glance. Without wanting to get into semantics, the real problem her elies in the fact that an estimated 20% or more of our nations' populations participate in breaking this law.
The question now is thus: Morals are what we feel is right or wrong to do unto each other in our society. 20% or more of us feel its their right to download entertainment content. At what point will moral conform to public opinion? Is something wrong when 100% of the people do it? Is it wrong when 50% do it? 49%? When?
The whole system is fucked up. The system is being abused. That's just a hard fact. We are not against the system, we are against the abuse.
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.
The benefits seem to be getting to subsidize public projects in other countries and uncontrolled immigration. I'm all for us leaving the EU and resuming war with France.
Ah, but you've missed the point. Currently, after the IPRED law the ISPs are deleting logs. After the Data Retention directive, they will be forced to preserve logs. The Data Retention directive only give police permission to get data from it. But IPRED requires them to hand over the logs they do have to the MAFIAA, all of them. Unless the Data Retention directive explicitly forbids that other laws give other permissions to the data in question, the MAFIAA got it just the way they want it. And that would be very, very unusual to put in law - just like one crime can violate separate laws, multiple laws can give permissions to different groups. And if you say "It'll never be abused that way" I got a bridge to sell you...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This was a big area of debate before the EU formed: Just how much of autonomy and national identity must a country give up to be a member of the EU? What happens when an EU member (say, France, for instance), or a small coalition of countries, have a major influence on the EU Parliament and try to impose their values in conflict with the national traditional values? What happens if Turkey tries to impose it's values concerning drug use on the Netherlands? Why should France's or GB's values on privacy (or lack thereof) be imposed on Sweden?
In the United States of America, the individual States are supposed to be "sovereign" and all rights not specifically granted to the Federal Government are the province of the individual States. Over the years "creeping Federalism" has undermined the individuality, power and authority of the individual States. This has also been happening in in the EU. Sweden is technically a "Constitutional Monarchy". Did Swedes know that by joining the EU they gave away their Constitution?
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
IAAS (I Am A Swede)
This directive will soon be passed. The reason this has taken so long is because it's an initiative taken by the previous party in lower (Social Democrats) and the current part(y|ies) (AKA The Alliance, moderates) in power doesn't like the leftists and the head of the judicial branch has been wining over this directive ever since day one. Nonetheless she is obligated to enforce the directive and says so herself. Even though she proclaims herself to be a integrity watchdog she's just as bad as the leftists.
Battle lost on that front.
The Pirate Party will however make it to the EU parliament this year and we can hope for some real change on these integrity issues.
Fight for your digital freedom, join the EFF *now*: http://www.eff.org/support/
The United States is such a thing. The Federal government routinely issues mandatory directives to the states, and any disputes are decided by the federal government alone.
Indeed, and the UK have already made it illegal to refuse to unencrypt data. And if you've forgotten/lost your key, tough luck.
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.
See, if the EU was smart, they would first use the power of the purse to ensure that the individual countries are completely dependent upon Brussels for funding. Then when the individual countries refuse to do what you want you just threaten to cut off their funding.
And what do you know? Eventually you've managed to completely destroy the sovereignty of your member states without firing a single bullet.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
>Unless the Data Retention directive explicitly forbids that other laws
>give other permissions to the data in question, the MAFIAA got it just
>the way they want it. And that would be very, very unusual to put in law
And yet that is exactly what the law says. Or rather, it says the data stored according to this law can ONLY be accessed and required for by police and other govermental authorities in investigations of more serious crimes. Not eben the ISP and others who store data themselves are allowed to access this data.
Of course, they can store data IN ADDITION to this law according to other existing laws as well, which would be the exact same system as we have today. Actually the leaked "Lagrådsremiss" specifically comments a request by media companies that also wanted access to this data saying that they will not get access to it.