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European Human Rights Court Rules Mass Surveillance Illegal (theregister.co.uk)
Kekke sends this report from El Reg:
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that mass surveillance is illegal, in a little-noticed case in Hungary. In a judgment last week, the court ruled that the Hungarian government had violated article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to privacy) due to its failure to include "sufficiently precise, effective and comprehensive" measures that would limit surveillance to only people it suspected of crimes. Under a section of the 2011 National Security Act, a minister of the government is able to approve a police request to search people's houses, mail, phones and laptops if they are seeking to protect national security. ... The court said the Hungarian government should be required to interpret the law in a narrow fashion and "verify whether sufficient reasons for intercepting a specific individual's communications exist in each case." Or in other words, every individual case must be looked at carefully and a decision made on each. Which is clearly impossible if the law is taken to carry out mass surveillance, i.e., hoovering up information over the internet and then searching in it."
I assume you're trolling. But on the offchance that you're actually swallowing this BS, there's only one response: you big wussy pussy.
Much of the EU has its own deep dark history with German Nazi occupied Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., Soviet occupation, decades of NSA, CIA and GCHQ operations.
Mass surveillance was used on a lot of the different nations and individuals for different party, political or trade reasons.
Legal teams can draw on the past generational experiences under fascist, communist and now EU/US/NATO rule and tell the press about what they found.
Recall the vaults filled with audio tape opened in the 1990's. The vast amounts of files the East Germans collected and then tried to destroy. The German legal views on opening East German files re East or West German collected content. Now the NSA whistleblowers.
Looks like the EU just found out about the wisdom of the US 4th amendment to be secure in their persons, houses, papers vs big government or a politico-economic union tyranny.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
...will they ever root out terrorists before terrorists strike? Such a law will lead to another Charlie Hibdo attack!!
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
The ECHR ruled over a decade ago that even prisoners have a right to vote. The UK replied 'we'll get right on it' and promptly did nothing at all. We've been in violation of their ruling for all that time, and there's nothing they can do. Our prime minister even openly brags that we are ignoring the ruling*. This will be no different. The ECHR doesn't actually have an effective enforcement mechanism, should a member state choose to ignore them.
*http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20053244
While Poland has some difficult history with Russia and while our geopolitical interest are often contradictory, Poles don't 'hate' Russians. Don't confuse politics with normal people.
When will this meme ever die?
Firstly, the vast majority of cameras are privately owned, looking at back doors, stock rooms, car parks... Police etc have to request copies of videos (with a warrant if the owner doesn't want to hand over and/or their insurance company doesn't insist as part of the settlement following an incident)
This must be good for the Slashdot crowd because private==good and government==bad and the cameras wouldn't be there if it weren't for market forces (i.e. lower insurance premiums)
Secondly, although there are large numbers, many are dummies or of such poor quality that they're less than useful (see the footage shown on Crimewatch** and other TV shows). In one previous project, I've seen the images from safety cameras looking at dangerous rail crossings and you'd be hard pushed to tell if it's a man or woman in the picture, let alone distinguish facial details [to be fair it was mainly an infra red image to allow usage at night, but as a means of detecting who was acting dangerously/stupidly it's no good].
Thirdly- the figures often quoted were from a small and not very scientific study by looking at one or two streets and extrapolating.
This has as much validity as saying the population of the US is over 6 times that of the world -- by taking the population density of New York and multiplying by the land area of the US.
There is a debate to be had on mass surveillance - but cheap shots on poor foundations do not help anyone. The world is a lot more nuanced than stereotypes and slogans.
**Monthly TV show that appeals for help / witnesses in unsolved crimes -- local equivalents exist elsewhere
FTFY.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."