EU To Monitor All Internet Searches

Xemu writes "The European Parliament is issuing a written declaration about the need to set up an early warning system to combat sexual child abuse. However, the substance of the declaration is to extend the EU data retention directive to search engines, so that all searches done on for example Google will be monitored. If you are a citizen concerned about the right to privacy and freedom on the Internet, you can help by sending e-mail to the MEPs from your country and explaining the issue to them."

Comments

Re:All searches?

[Halo1]

It's mainly a good opportunity to correct some sensationalist misreporting:

• A written declaration is just that: a declaration. It's not a legislative proposal and has no legislative value. So the title "EU To Monitor All Internet Searches" is complete bullshit. If it is adopted, at most it can be used to remind MEPs later on that they supported this text, and hence should support legislative proposals in the same vein. However...
• ... as TFA explains, MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) have been misled into signing it, because the statement that "data retention should be extended to search engine queries" is hidden in the text. "Data retention" is not mentioned, it just says, amongst many other statements, "implement Directive 2006/24/EC and extend it to search engines in order to tackle online child pornography and sex offending rapidly and effectively". There are tons of directives and most MEPs won't have looked up what this specific directive is.

Since MEPs have been mostly misled into signing onto that particular statement, it is quite unlikely to have any clout if cited back at them later on. If someone tricked you into signing a declaration containing stuff you don't support, you'd probably not be very motivated to strongly care about it later on either. In that sense, overblowing the whole thing like in this Slashdot summary is completely counterproductive, because you give the MEPs signature more weight and make them actually more bound to it then they would be otherwise!

Christian Engström's blog post (TFA), where he explains how MEPs are misled, is good because it can help getting rid of the declaration altogether by exposing it for the deceit that it is.

This summary on the other hand is just a bunch of misinformation that will cause a lot of misguided mails to be sent. It might also raise awareness and cause MEPs to withdraw their signatures, but it will probably cause at least as many MEPs to disregard the complaints because it will be clear that people sending a mail don't know what the hell they are talking about.