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EU Sues Sweden, Demands ISP Data Retention

Posted by samzenpus on from the save-it-or-else dept.

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."

18 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by anonieuweling · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Why? by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo · · Score: 5, Funny

      If you gpg/pgp the terrorists have already won

      --
      "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
    2. Re:Why? by Jurily · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:Why? by x2A · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Sues Sweden? And what if they don't obey?"

      All the rest of us start sending them all our asylum seekers mwuhahahaaa!

      --
      The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
    4. Re:Why? by BESTouff · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because if you have to take active protection measures against your government, that means it (the gov) went too far in the security-against-liberty battle. And this is presumably what they (the terrorists) want.

    5. Re:Why? by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Since the EU is very "democratic" (meaning the -mostly appointed- ministers of foreign affairs of the EU countries make the real decisions*), Sweden has a choice : pass the law, or leave the EU (meaning switching away from the euro, no more free trade, ...)

      In the EU, you only have to convince 12 non-elected commisioners to create a dictatorship. Individual member countries have long lost control over both their own law and their territorial sovereignty. They cannot legally say no to the EU.

      Many Europeans (imho rightly) fear what's going to happen with this body. It's already created a segregated society in the locations where it's located : Brussels, Strasbourg, Luxenburg and Frankfurt. There is zero contact between the fonctionnaires and the local population, which is logical in a way, since they're an unelected body.

      * yes they're appointed -indirectly- by an elected body, I know. Still it's not the same as a real democracy.

    6. Re:Why? by I+cant+believe+its+n · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not to worry, the Swedish government parties simply do not want to lose more votes in the EU-parliament elections that take place on the 7:th of june.

      For this reason there is no 99-page government proposal for the implementation of the Data Retention Directive, but for some reason you can already download the proposal through the highly dependable Wikileaks network:

      Both the directive and the government proposal states that the reasons for the comming law are terrorists and organized crime (human trafficing and narcotics). Although the law is intended to fight serious crime, the government states that it does not see any reason to limit what organizations can request information from the required logs.

      ... and invited to share their views on this law proposal are (naturally)... IFPI

      Yes, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry has been invited to share their views on a law against terrorists and drug smugglers. Their opinion? Well, a 6 month retention plan might be too short, but generally they appreciate the proposal.

      Does anyone wonder why the Pirate Party are winning more and more votes?

      --
      She made the willows dance
    7. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      * 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
      ---
      * Appointed indirectly by an elected body? Sort of like the electoral college? That puts the US in a very interesting light.

    8. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    9. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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

    10. Re:Why? by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.
    11. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why the fuck is this modded insightful?

      By the same argument: most crime is organised behind locked doors, therefore all non-criminal citizens should leave their doors unlocked and open so as not to hinder the police in their endeavours.

    12. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Terrorists are now pro-freedom?
      Dammit, I've been BSed by our governments!.."

      Doesn't it ever occur to Americans that Terrorists ARE interested in freedom? THEIR freedom!

      The only reason people are trying to kill Americans is that they think America has been oppressing them for generations. You can argue about whether this is a true belief or not, but that is what is going on in their heads. No one except Bush and Cheney actually believes that, for some reason, goat farmers living on a hillside in Pakistan are so involved in political theory that they hate the theoretical concept of a capitalist two-party 'democracy' and are willing to travel half-way round the world to attack it.

      What they see is a foreign country (used to be Britain, now America) coming into their country and supporting local tyrants in order to ensure the flow of oil, or to suppress any left wing politics and 'workers rights'. Eventually, they get pissed off. If the US troops, or the local warlord the US supports, kill enough locals, their family survivors are going to be REALLY pissed off.

      There is a simple answer to stopping all 'terrorism', but it involves stopping having foreign-based armies, negotiating for access to raw materials, and accepting that sometimes other countries don't want to sell you things. So that isn't going to happen any day soon......

  2. This is why we don't like the EU. by VShael · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now lobbyists only have to bribe a handful of central political bastards to affect the whole of Europe.

    1. Re:This is why we don't like the EU. by Halo1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Now lobbyists only have to bribe a handful of central political bastards to affect the whole of Europe.

      You apparently didn't follow the data retention directive farce at all. This was not brought about by "central political bastards", and the lobbyists were the various national governments. That directive was a wet dream of law enforcement agencies from all over Europe, and pushed through by the various national governments in the name of thinking of the terrorists and the children.

      The rapporteur (Alexander Alvaro) of the directive in the European Parliament (EP) tried to tone it down, only to be backstabbed by the national governments (forming the EU Council of Ministers) that managed to pressure the large political groups in the EP behind his back to ignore his report and voting recommendations.

      Alexander Alvaro was so disgusted with the whole circus that after the vote he had his name removed as rapporteur for the directive.

      --
      Donate free food here
    2. Re:This is why we don't like the EU. by Spad · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  3. Re:Why sue now? by ckret · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!

  4. And Sweden was the one that proposed the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.