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

[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

[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

[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

[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: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.