Slashdot Mirror
European Data Retention Rule Could Violate Fundamental EU Law
An anonymous reader writes in with a story about the Constitutional Court of Austria objecting to the EU's data retention law. "The European Union's data retention law could breach fundamental E.U. law because its requirements result in an invasion of citizens' privacy, according to the Constitutional Court of Austria, which has asked the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to determine the directive's validity. The primary problem with the data retention law is that it almost exclusively affects people in whom government or law enforcement have no prior interest. But authorities use the data for investigations and are informed about people's personal lives, the court said, and there is a risk that the data can be abused. 'We doubt that the E.U. Data Retention Directive is really compatible with the rights that are guaranteed by the E.U. Charter of Fundamental Rights,' Gerhart Holzinger, president of the Constitutional Court of Austria said in a statement."
It's worth remembering the history of these data retention laws. Basically Blair (as a proxy for Bush) pushed these through when the UK had the EU Presidency in 2005:
http://www.euractiv.com/infosociety/uk-presidency-revive-data-storag-news-214430
UK had a terrorist attack in 2005, the police tracked one suspect by his phone. Blair then insisted on data retention, saying it was necessary to catch this guy in Italy and just happened to have a piece of legislation drafted already. The EU caved and let him push it through when he held the UK EU presidency.
Oh course the logic is faulty, he WAS caught without the data retention directive, so it wasn't necessary. He was caught because he didn't know his phone could be tracked, post data retention, everyone knows it, so he would have thrown away the phone now.
The basic idea that everyone is a future potential criminal to be monitored, is very powerful. Because the police never reveal the millions of times they've poked into people lives without finding anything, only the few times they poke into the lives of people and arrest a terrorist/pedo and occasionally the times they get caught snooping into a celebrities lives for Murdoch, but mostly only the pro-surveillance marketing stuff is ever visible, with the rest kept secret.
There was a similar conflict when the German government wanted to collect information about everybody's religion and communicate that to their employers and churches (ostensibly for taxation purposes). If that isn't a grave violation of privacy in a country that murdered millions because of their religious affiliation, I don't know what is. There was a lawsuit over it. The outcome? The EU declared it legal. Logic apparently goes out the window when European governments or large special interests themselves want to collect data on their citizens.
I've been living in Austria for a little while now, and it makes me happy that the government here is not just filled with pushovers when it comes to the EU's lawyers churning out horrible, impractical, technically retarded ideas.
Who knows what will actually be passed, though :-(. Austria is like a little chunk of paradise in the first world; I doubt people here realize how close they're coming to screwing it up. This is, after all, a country where every murder makes the evening news, police violence is completely unknown, people start getting perceptibly nervous when a train/streetcar/subway is 2 minutes late, and everyone likes to complain how tough life is while they're on their 5 weeks of paid vacation, collecting their 14-months-a-year paychecks, and living with dignity (not to mention enough disposable income to buy iPhones etc) even if they're cleaning toilets for a living.
*deep breath*
Point is, I hope that this actually prevents the law (and similar laws) from being passed, but I'm not exactly holding out hope that the Austrian government suddenly understands, on a deeply intuitive level, that these laws are actually dangerous and designed to subtly erode the freedom in a country.
Yes. I dislike lots of stuff about the EU.
But at the same time, I love it. It has knit Europe together so that it has a shared destiny. This prevents wars.
It has knit Europe together, so that we don't have shitloads of border controls. We can travel between countries without passports (Well, at least between the schengen members).
Now - there are plenty bad things about the EU - but there are so many good things too.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
You are an idiot. Whenever I travel to the US or even Canada, I am remined of how horrible the passing of borders can be (the Canadians are nice and polite about it, but the concept of some guy asking me where I am going without having any cause tu suspect me is highly disagreeable).
Also, you misunderstand History: the Treaty of Rome in 1957 is the treaty that started it all. The ECSC became the EU, eventually. and the EU is nmot the end point. It is a unique experiment in the History of the world to create a nation from countries with thousands of years of war behind them. It makes sense economically: 30 sets of norms are a clear hindrance to commerce, and a common market without this makes no sense. Nor does it make sense without union-wide supervision.
More importantly, it ensures my freedom to go wherever I please in Europe and work there. It ensures that no citizen is SOL when their government goes bonkers: higher norms must be obeyed. To me, the guarentee of fundamental freedoms is more important that the guarentee that my government can be arbitrarily dickish to me without external interference. People moaning about "sovereingty" really mean "I don't like them foreigners" and "why can't we be horrible to people we don't like?".
Indeed, the big thing to work upon currently (but it seems that this is not only a EU problem) is to instil in the people of the European Commission, that it is their duty to uphold the law, and if they want to achieve something where the law blocks them, the first thing is to start up a debate about why the law is that way, not try to change the law as fast as possible.
Well, if this is found to break the fundamental charter, which is part of the treaties, it is not that easy to lobby for it to change. That would require a massive effort which would not be very practical.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
And this AC post excellently defines to our non-UK colleagues, exactly how a reader of the Daily Mail thinks. They think that things like the ECtHR do nothing but prevent us deporting scrounging asylum seekers without giving any thought to how it's absence could affect the government's treatment of each and every citizen of the country.
The EU is not just the institutions, it is an idea as well. Governments do indeed blame the Union for things they have been along negotiating in the council, this being quite unfair in many cases.
You complain that the commission is not elected, well firstly, strictly speaking, neither is any government of any member state in the Union. The main problem has been that the commission has not actually represented the parliamentary election results. Will you be happy to know that from the next elections (in 2014), the commission will be appointed based on the EP election results? This is actually a result of the Lisbon treaty.
Further, the commission are not breaking any local laws they prime mandate is to guarantee that the treaties are upheld by the member states. The member states have ratified the treaties, and this means that the treaties are law in the member states. Typically the treaties take president over every law in the member state except for their constitutions, which in turn means that any law that is incompatible with the treaties is an illegal law. Remember, membership in the Union means that your country has ratified the treaty and that the treaty (and accompanying directives) is the law. The commission is therefore strictly say, when they point out errors in member states laws, telling the member states that they do not follow their own laws.
The EU does indeed employ around 40k civil servants, but you should compare this to a medium sized city in Europe. These cities will by themselves often have more bureaucrats on their payroll than the entire Union.
You claim that MEPs are not present most of the time, such claim requires proof, and to be frank a comparison with attendance records for the member states. If you wish to look at different MEPs, research has shown that eurosceptic MEPs produce far fewer amendments, documents and have lower attendance records than main stream or euro centric MEPs. The point of this is that the "lazy MEPs" are in fact, predominately those with eurosceptic tendencies.
The EU does also indeed want more money. But, on the other hand, since the Lisbon treaty, the EU has not received any more money, despite having (based on the treaties negotiated by the member state governments) to set up the european foreign service (including embassies all over the world); and despite having to expand certain areas such as the ECB being given more work to do with the latest treaty. There is only so much you can do in order to optimising the current funds with respect to the job the Union has been given by the member states.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
It's main purpose : being the bogeyman for governments for unpopular laws ("Sorry, we must do that. Ze EU said so.")
It's 100% true that governments use the EU as a justification for unpopular laws. But this tells more about the governments than about the EU itself.
More than 40000 people ^H^H^H^H^H^H assholes are leeching tax payers money for doing nothing important or worthy
Wait, until now you've said that the EU has the power to force your government to pass unpopular laws, and now you say they do "nothing important"? If you send, as you call them, assholes to the EU, that's because you elected them (usually, the national parties try to shovel into the EU parliament their members who didn't manage to get elected in some national assembly). Next time be more careful.
(except defining the exact radius of the curvature of a banana and how a cucumber should look like. Reeeeeaaallly important stuff).
They're laws that are used to regulate the import of foreign products, usually in order to defend the local ones through import taxes. Look at the countries outside the EU, and you'll se that they have national laws doing the same kind of stuff that the EU does for its member states.
I applaud them for giving their citizens a referendum about Britain's future within (or outside) the EU...
Now we agree, the britons should decide once and for all what they want to do when they're grown up.