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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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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.