Swedish ISPs To Thwart EU Data Retention Law

aaardwark writes "After a leaked document from the department of justice showed police will be able to demand extensive private information for minor offenses, some Swedish ISPs have decided to fight back (translated article). By routing all traffic through VPN, they plan to make the gathered data pointless. ISP Bahnhof says they will give you the option to opt out of VPN, but giving up your privacy will cost extra."

Comments

Wrong motive

[MrQuacker]

It would be nice if their motive really was righteous. They seem to be doing it just because it would cost them a lot to comply with every request the police made.

Re:Wrong motive

[guruevi]

Either way it's good for the customers. Google likewise decides to be notsoevil because otherwise it would cost them too much. Data retention is the wet dream of every mainstream politician these days, it allows for unlimited powers of coercion. The fact that storage is expensive and our governments are too broke to pay for it themselves is a blessing albeit a temporary one.

Re:Wrong motive

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does the ISP have to engage in law enforcement at the ISP's expense? How about tax payers (who usually pay law enforcement costs) pay the ISP's costs to implement all the data capture and logging (and filtering).

Of course the ISP wants to reduce costs. They are not a charity. Would you work for free, assuming you had no other sources of income, no way to support yourself and/or family (housing/food/etc)? No? Gee, why expect someone else (i.e. an ISP) to work for free?

I know someone who works for an ISP and know just how much work and additional equipment it would require if the ISP had to do things like the European ISPs. And in the US lawmakers are threatening to add onerous data retention laws that will burden ISPs, costing the ISP. Guess where that money is gonna come from. Yep. Rates will go up. Yet another unfunded mandate from the government.

Re:Wrong motive

[wvmarle]

They're a business, they're in the business to make money, and will find ways to make as much money they can. That's plain economics, every business tries to do so (and, one could argue, that includes non-profit organisations). Altruism doesn't make money directly - however it can give goodwill, promotion, whatever that in the long run increases the company's profits.

Now back to the altruism/principles part what this is about: like Google with their famous "do no evil" slogan, they want to be seen as caring for their customers. There may or may not be personal reasons of the company's leadership behind this of course. Some companies will say "OK we'll just follow the law, store data as required, keep a low profile, go on with business", and set up their servers to comply with the law. This ISP and apparently others too have said "we don't agree with these laws; we consider it highly intrusive for our customers; and we will find ways to protect our customers' privacy while staying within the letter of the law", and are planning to make the necessary investments to do so. They obviously have to make bigger investments than the first group as they have to implement both the storage and the extra work for the workaround, and they have apparently thought publicity.

This publicity I think is good, really. It makes the law and it's intentions and consequences so much better known with the public - basically with this they could even hope to spark enough of an outrage to have the laws repealed. And if not, at least they got a lot of free advertising of their ISP out of it. That may be so good for their business that they make a net gain out of it.

Altruism is simply part of smart business operation. You give some you get some. Goodwill is important, and this way they could build up goodwill with their customers. Just don't expect a business is going all altruistic just because they can - their owners may on a personal basis, but businesses are about making money. That, and nothing less.

Re:Wrong motive

[dcollins]

"Google likewise decides to be notsoevil because otherwise it would cost them too much."

I'm pretty convinced that Brin & Page have some specific political-philosophical motivations for what they do (partly based on Brin's upbringing in the Soviet Union), and not exclusively a profit motive.

Re:Wrong motive

[Kjella]

Bahnhof has fought for their customer at every step of the way, even when there's been no direct economic gain. They probably don't want to officially go out as some sort of "referee" saying who they think is right and who they think is wrong, but they've really done everything you could ask for. I don't know what it is you want, to announce themselves as the lawless ISP or the pirate ISP or anything like that would only be foolish in so many ways.

Re:Wrong motive

[Sique]

But if it's your ISP who does the hiding routinely and you have to pay extra to get clear text, which in turn means that everyone is doing it, what probable cause is it then?

Re:Wrong motive

[mcrbids]

It's important to accept the actions that people do that benefit you regardless of their motivations. Understanding their motivations is only useful in predicting future behavior, and perhaps to judge the veracity with which they pursue your common interest.

Never, ever decry an action that benefits you or a cause you believe in because the actor's motivations aren't the same as yours!

Re:Wrong motive

[horza]

Google is not a good example, as they have more cash in the bank than they know what to do with. I don't want to take anything away from Brin and Page, they have done a sterling job so far, but a small ISP in a competitive market with razor thin margins trying to take a stand is more impressive.

Phillip.

Re:Wrong motive

[migla]

I'm pretty convinced that Brin & Page have some specific political-philosophical motivations for what they do (partly based on Brin's upbringing in the Soviet Union), and not exclusively a profit motive.

Likewise, I'm sure the dude that started Bahnhof, the ISP of choice of the informed geek in Sweden, along with their current decision-makers, personally like integrity and whatever else "good" services they provide.

They are, however, a publicly traded company, which means that they must believe that being the "good" ISP makes good business sense.

If the market would "feel" that lower quality service, fucking over their customers and selling them out to the man is better for the bottom line of Bahnhof or Google or any other publicly traded company, then players in the market would probably make that happen, sooner or later, whatever delusions of goodness the current leadership may have.

Re:Wrong motive

[vegiVamp]

It's not nust about splitting log events. It's also about adding a lot more logging (you don't routinely log every connection from every customer, let alone the contents of them); but also the keeping of records for seven years. Given the amount of traffic ISPs push, that requires ungodly amounts of storage, which in turn requires ungodly amounts of power.

Re:Wrong motive

[AmiMoJo]

Can someone in Sweden comment on how mainstream this stuff is over there? People in the UK know hardly anything about online tracking, data retention, net neutrality and so on. Are the ISPs in Sweden taking a stand on principal alone or do these issues actually matter to their customers?

Re:Wrong motive

[smallfries]

As a Brit living in Sweden I can answer some of your question. People over here do care a lot more about internet access than in the UK - they want it to be fast, reliable and work as transparently as possible. You could say that internet access has become much more of a basic commodity over here. It is also used a lot more heavily. Unlike the UK market an unlimited connection means unlimited. There are huge untapped amounts of bandwidth in the backbone because the provisioning model used for building networks over here is very different. They assume that people will use bandwidth that is available to them and don't over-provision to the same level.

Privacy is a slightly different issue and it is much harder to see where the Swedish stand on it. On the one hand everyone over here is in many public government databases and nobody cares about it. There is even a website devoted to looking up peoples addresses and birthdays (and of course being Swedish it gets used to send flowers). On the other hand when people decide that they have a right to privacy on anything it is considered to be absolute. If the media over here is told not to publish a name to avoid compromising someone's privacy then it stays private.

There was a huge backlash over the IPred laws over the same issues (retention of IP traffic and linking it to real world identities). Many Swedish ISPs have already announced similar plans with respect to that law - ways of avoiding compliance to protect people's privacy. This new law is in effect the next salvo in the ongoing fight against the IPred laws and as such there is widespread support for avoiding compliance as much as possible.

Re:Wrong motive

[xenobyte]

It is very much about the principles. Consider the following scenarios:

A) The police suspects a specific person of a specific crime, goes to the courts and gets a warrant to intercept communication in order to gather evidence - and so on.

B) The police suspects someone may be committing a crime and request (no warrant needed) all logs in order to comb them for possible suspects and gather evidence against these suspects, if any.

No question that option B is the easiest for the police, but it is extremely invasive and makes the ISP a part of the policing system. Option A also requires actual police work in advance, in order to put a name on the suspect and to get enough circumstantial evidence in order to get a warrant.

The argument for B has always been the quest for terrorists. But so far all terrorists arrested have left enough data on their PCs for the authorities to compile and use in a trial. None have been found through this generic logging and the logging will not yield information not already available on the suspects computers.

The logging from B is useless against encrypted communication and the primary terrorist forums already use encrypted chat forums. You can log that there was traffic to the IP of the website with the chat but not whether the suspect actually joined the chat or what was said in it. It is useless as both an information gathering device and as evidence (looking at a website isn't a crime for instance). In other words you have something that's expensive, invasive and useless.

Re:Wrong motive

[Reality Master 301]

This is possibly the dumbest comment I've ever read on slashdot. Are you saying I should never ever say anything bad about something, if it slightly benefits me personally? For instance, if someone cut your head off and gave me a small part of the money in your wallet? Or if a popular politican was killed, because he/she didn't share my opinion on tax levels? Or if a mod decided to lock your account, because of your stupid ideas?

Re:Wrong motive

[AmiMoJo]

I was one of the people who complained to the Advertising Standards Authority that "unlimited" in adverts actually means "limited" when you read the small print. Their response was that limits were a normal part of traffic management for ISPs so they are basically allowed to lie with impunity. No word on what constitutes a "normal" amount, e.g. T-Mobile used to advertise their mobile BB as unlimited when in fact there was a pathetic 3GB/month limit.

The attitude to provisioning sounds similar to Japan. If you build it, they will come. If your network is awesome you can offer lots of new services like reasonable quality video on demand and eat into other markets. If you network is shit you have to block BBC iPlayer in the evenings or only allow people to watch a postage stamp resolutions (e.g. BT, Virgin Media). Rather than seeing bandwidth as an opportunity they see it as a problem.

The privacy aspect is interesting. On the one hand we are the most watched country in the world, and on the other our internet access if fully recorded and available to the police. So we are pretty much screwed at this stage, and the much touted repealing of overreaching laws has yet to actually happen.

Re:I agree with an earlier poster,

[intellitech]

Attached to source submission (google translate'd): http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=sv&tl=en&u=http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx%3Fprogramid%3D1646%26artikel%3D4311500&act=url

Original Link

[intellitech]

If you can read it:

http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=1646&artikel=4311500

Re:Original Link

[wvmarle]

Yes, and kudos to Google's machine translation. It was actually a pretty pleasant read, the sentences made as much sense as the average /. reply.

LE is not the real privacy enemy anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

The privacy violation and spying that Law Enforcement does is nothing compared to what google, facebook, twitter, linkedin, etc. are doing. I think the privacy advocates need to rethink who the real enemy is. With search, chat, mail, ads, analytics, like buttons, and other embedded icons/code spread throughout the web, these big web companies can gather more intelligence than anyone. LE has the goal of eliminating crime, big-web has the goal of raking in cash. Who is your real privacy enemy?

Re:LE is not the real privacy enemy anymore

[boarder8925]

Both are our "real privacy enem[ies]." Google et al make money off all the information they index and archive about us, and the law-enforcement agencies can turn around and demand that data to intimidate, harass, and persecute us. We're getting royally screwed no matter how you look at it, but at least Google can't send you to pound-you-in-the-ass prison, or beat the shit out of you on the way there.

I knew it.

[santax]

All that fresh air and clean water (and as much as I hate it, anti-alcohol-policy) had to be good for something. Little did I knew it would be common sense that would benefit. I'm not from Sweden but as soon as I can afford to be an alcoholic there I will immigrate to it!

Re:Why this convoluted solution?

[Carewolf]

It sends a stronger signal of taking the law serious. As long as nobody cares, it is not effectual law and can not be enforced, by circumventing it you are acknowledging the law and could be liable for trying to circumvent the law.

Re:YES IT IS

[fnj]

I think it is less that megacorporations are to some extent replacing the government as the enemy, than that it is becoming more and more difficult to find a line of distinction between the government and the megacorporations.

Viking Heritage

[andersh]

Well, English is a close cousin of all the Scandinavian languages, but more to the point Old Norse.

The original Old English language was influenced by two waves of invasion: the first by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic language family, who conquered and colonized parts of Britain in the 8th and 9th centuries; the second by the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman.

However it was the Danish and Norwegian Vikings that attacked and settled in Britain. Have you heard of the Danelaw? So it would be more precise to say English has a closer relationship with Danish/Norwegian than Swedish.

In fact some dialects still exist in the northwest of England that sounds like modern Norwegian (BBC, 2008). Indeed, modern genetic sampling and research reveals a lot of Viking blood heritage in England, Ireland and Scotland.

The influence of this period of Scandinavian settlement can still be seen, and is particularly evident in place-names: name endings such as -howe, -by ("village") or "thorp" ("hamlet").

Furthermore many British island groups, including the Isle of Man(n) and Shetland, belonged to Norwegian Kings for hundreds of years. Indeed York was once known by its original name Jorvik. Dublin (Dubh Linn) and other Irish cities were Viking settlements.

Then later the descendants of Norwegian/Danish settlers in Normandy, France, decided to invade and conquer England. Of course by that time William the Conqueror and his men spoke French. His father again was the well known [Norwegain/Danish] Rollo, or Hrólfr, who forced the French king to sign a treaty ceding part of the province to him, from which it took the name of Normandy, the country of the Northmen.

Ironically it was the attack of the invading Norwegian Viking army under King Harald Hardråda and Tostig Godwinson, brother of the English King, that led to the fall of England to the Normans. King Harold managed to beat the Norwegian invaders at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, near York, but was not strong enough to withstand a second attack by the Norman army. In 1066 at the time of the Battle of Hastings the languages were mutually intelligible.

Swedish Vikings moved east and played a major role in the development of Russia. These Vikings are know as the Rus and it is from this name that the name of Russia has been derived. Actually the Rus were Swedish Vikings meaning the northern Germanic tribes which setteled in Sweden. The Term Rus was not what they called themselves, but the name given them by the Finns. Today Sweden is Ruotsia in Finnish.

English, the three Scandinavian languages, Icelandic, Dutch and German all belong to the Germanic language family.