Last chance to fight EU Data Retention

TJM · 09-12-2005 2:58pm #1

Next Tuesday, the 13th of December, the European Parliament will vote on a Data Retention Directive. This proposes to extend data retention to the Internet, and will result in your ISPs logging every email you send, every web page you visit, and everything else you do online and storing that information for several years.

We urge you to email, fax or phone your MEPs as soon as possible to express your opposition to this measure, which will introduce mass surveillance of every man, woman and child in the EU.

As to what you should say, it is best if that comes directly from what you consider important. However, Privacy International and EDRI have adopted a position (which DRI has endorsed) setting out five key criticisms of the Directive. Feel free to copy and paste these if you wish.

1. This Directive invades the privacy of all Europeans. The Directive calls for the indiscriminate collection and retention of data on a wide range of Europeans’ activities. Never has a policy been introduced that mandates the mass storage of information for the mere eventuality that it may be of interest to the State at some point in the future.

2. The proposed Directive is illegal. It contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights by proposing the indiscriminate and disproportionate recording of sensitive personal information. Political, legal, medical, religious and press communications would be logged, exposing such information to use and abuse.

3. The Directive threatens consumer confidence. More than 58,000 Europeans have already signed a petition opposing the Directive. A German poll revealed that 78% of citizens were opposed to a retention policy. The Directive will have a chilling effect on communications activity as consumers may avoid participating in entirely legal transactions for fear that this will be logged for years.

4. The Directive burdens EU industry and harms global competitiveness. Retention of all this data creates additional costs of hundreds of millions of Euros every year. These burdens are placed on EU industry alone. The U.S., Canada and the Council of Europe have already rejected retention.

5. The Directive requires more invasive laws. Once adopted, this Directive will prove not to be the ultimate solution against serious crimes. There will be calls for additional draconian measures including:
* the prior identification of all those who communicate, thus requiring ID cards at cybercafes, public telephone booths, wireless hotspots, and identification of all pre-paid clients;
* the banning of all international communications services such as webmail (e.g. Hotmail and Gmail) and blocking the use of non-EU internet service providers and advanced corporate services.

Helpfully, we in Ireland are in a unique position to lobby our MEPs - because the Government has already stated it is so opposed to this particular draft that they will bring a case to the European Court of Justice to block it if the European Parliament approves it. Thus even MEPs from the Government Parties have no reason to support the proposed text in Tuesday’s vote.

It is not too late to stop this law: please join us by contacting your MEPs to say no to a surveillance society.

[Cross-posted from Digital Rights Ireland.]

Cloud · 12-12-2005 1:37pm

I've contacted my MEP, and I hope that many boards.ie members will do likewise.

cgarvey · 12-12-2005 2:32pm

I have emailed (eoin ryan and gay mitchell) ..but it's unlikely to be even read, at this late stage

TJM · 12-12-2005 6:25pm

cgarvey wrote:

it's unlikely to be even read, at this late stage

The vote has now been put back until Wednesday the 14th. It's still not too late to contact your MEP.

TimTim · 12-12-2005 6:26pm

I've just voiced my views with the excessive use of the bcc option.

Mutant_Fruit · 12-12-2005 7:28pm

TimTim wrote:

I've just voiced my views with the excessive use of the bcc option.

Here here! As have i!

DeVore · 12-12-2005 10:55pm

mail send to GMitchell.

DeV.

BrianD · 13-12-2005 12:06am

I think our so called minister for justice has demonstrated exactly why we need fear this data retention law. You just might find your phone records, that application for a disability benefit or other personal data dropped onto the newsdesk of your local newspaper. All in the interest of national security of course.

wheresthebeef · 13-12-2005 12:27am

i emailed all the FG and Lab and Ind MEP's about this. its so invasive and unworkable. I wonder who proposed it.

theking · 13-12-2005 10:30am

wheresthebeef wrote:

I wonder who proposed it.

The governments of the UK, Ireland, France and the Netherlands, in its original form.

White Rabbit · 13-12-2005 10:35am

Were the ones who proposed it in the firstplace!

Besides aren't our current national laws even more invasive?

see below

In that meeting, the LIBE committee stipulated that the data should be retained for a minimum of six months and a maximum of 12 and insisted that if national law enforcement authorities needed to have access to concrete data they would have to get judicial authorisation.

MEPs also stated that telcos should be fully reimbursed by Member States for all costs of retention, storage and transmission of data, including investment and operational costs.

But the Council of Ministers’ amendments change the retention period to a minumum of six months and a maximum of 24 months – with the proviso that Member States may decide on a longer term if they wish. (Ireland and Italy have maximum retention periods of three and four years respectively, while Poland is considering a retention period of 15 years.)

Ministers have also removed any requirement to reimburse telcos and have limited access to the retention data to the investigation of “serious crimes”.

The Council of Ministers and MEPs have been at loggerheads over the controversial proposals since they were first mooted by UK, Ireland, France and Sweden in April 2004.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/07/meps-data-retention_plan/

theking · 13-12-2005 12:13pm

We're the ones who proposed it in the firstplace!

Besides aren't our current national laws even more invasive?

Though we hold telephone call and mobile location data for three years, the Minister has said he's waiting for the European law to come in to extend retention to internet browsing, email and VoIP data.

0utshined · 13-12-2005 1:44pm

BrianD wrote:

I think our so called minister for justice has demonstrated exactly why we need fear this data retention law. You just might find your phone records, that application for a disability benefit or other personal data dropped onto the newsdesk of your local newspaper. All in the interest of national security of course.

Sorry, what are you referring to there? I'm genuinly interested.

Does anyone know in which country all this is supposed to be stored? If I access a site in Germany for example would a record be kept in Germany and in Ireland? Who would have access to this and what restrictions would be in place to prevent people accessing it if they shouldn't?

I really don't think this is a good idea.

theking · 13-12-2005 4:11pm

All the excitement of the European Parliament on your very own screen.

http://europa.eu.int/comm/avservices/ebs/welcome_en.cfm

To get hold of the stream just click on the green EBS Live button on the right. Then click on the EN button on the player, or you'll get them all talking in their own languages.

iceman_2001_ie · 14-12-2005 2:02pm

My two cents from

http://www.breakingnews.ie/2005/12/14/story235004.html

The measures, which were drafted by Britain after the London terrorist bombings in July and approved in record time, require companies to keep a wide range of data such as the incoming and outgoing phone numbers, the duration of phone calls, IP addresses, which identify a computer’s co-ordinates on the internet, login and logoff times and e-mail activity details – but not the actual content of communications.

I understand concerns about privacy.

However, if no content is stored, and one hasn't broken any laws during the correspondence, what is the issue?

dahamsta · 14-12-2005 3:42pm

iceman_2001_ie wrote:

However, if no content is stored, and one hasn't broken any laws during the correspondence, what is the issue?

You got that completely wrong iceman. The phrase you're looking for is: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." Please pay attention.

Now, I assume you have no problem with 24 hour surveillance of your person? Monitoring of the meds you use, what books you read, music you listen to, what you buy, what political party you're affiliated with? It's ok for someone to note down the details of each letter you receive and send?

We promise not to use this information to profile you. Honest. You can trust us.

adam

wheresthebeef · 14-12-2005 3:48pm

Responses from MEP's

Dear David,

Thank you for your email. I voted against the directive on data retention in the European Parliament this morning based on these grounds:
-I do not know why this proposal was rushed, the 'extremely accelerated legislation procedure has meant that there was little time for discussion and translations were sometimes unavailable. There was also no time for a technology assessment or for a study on the impact on the internal market. Bearing in mind the measures and plans aimed at better regulation at European level, it is to be hoped that the procedure used for debating data retention will not become the rule', to quote directly from the report to Parliament.
-There is a framework decision on this issue still with the Council of Ministers.
-There is doubt that the correct legal basis was used for this proposal.

Yours Sincerely,

Gay Mitchell MEP

Dear David,

Thank you for sharing your concerns about data retention. I am an
advocate of privacy. On Dec 13, 2005 Parliament will vote on data
retention. I will not present as I will be in Hong Kong as part of the
European Parliament Delegation to the World Trade Organization (WTO). By
lobbying now on your behalf and by voting NO when this comes up for a
second reading, I will do my part to ensure the privacy of my
constituents.

Sincerely,
Kathy Sinnott, MEP

Dear David,

Thank you for your email. It will be brought to Mrs Doyle´s attention prior to the vote.

Kind regards,

Paula Breen
p.p. Avril Doyle MEP

DeVore · 14-12-2005 4:34pm

I got a similar response from Gay Mitchell (identical in fact).

We'll have to talk about this amongst the admins to determine how it affects us and what we are going to do. I can't see us wilfully complying though...

DeV.

TJM · 14-12-2005 5:49pm

DeVore wrote:

We'll have to talk about this amongst the admins to determine how it affects us and what we are going to do. I can't see us wilfully complying though...

You don't need to do anything until we see the Irish transposition - and Ireland has 18 months to bring it in. However, what we have to start doing now is insisting that Justice consult with us before they draw up the implementing measure. There's a lot of wriggle room in the directive (partly because it's not very well drafted) - it leaves a great deal of discretion to member states. If we must live with this dreadful law, then we need to ensure that the Irish implementation invades privacy to the minimum extent possible.

Briony Noh · 06-01-2006 4:48pm

Privacy invasion is still an invasion. How does one (or do many) keep an invasion to a minimum?

I'm assuming by now that the votes have been counted and common sense has once again proved inadequate to dissuade the stealthdictators; that we can roll back another year on our calendars as our leaders drag us into a state of Orwellian Believe-It-Or-Not. Fascism, amazingly, piece-by-piece, item-by-item, governments can justify the details without ever once admitting what they all add up to.

This message, this opinion, this personal and of-the-moment view, or another like it, might find itself logged and stored somewhere and one day, I'll do something innocently illegal - overdue tax on the car, parking fine, whatever - and they'll look at my record and find this cross-referenced to all the innocent things I've done and they'll say, "Does that sound like a dissident to you?" They'll say, "Let's keep an eye on him for a while," or "let's watch who he talks to," or "his wife" or "his children". And one day, if it isn't me, then someone I know will be arrested because of my automotive innocence. Will they deserve to be arrested? Ask the IRA sympathiser who never lifted a hand against another human being, but talked too loudly too often and was interned for expressing his right to free speech. Ask Salman Rushdie or Nelson Mandela who also spoke freely and were imprisoned each by a different differing form of alternative culture. Ask your young sweet-stealing self or your ten-biros-a-week-from-the-office sister or your brother with the disease that needs treatment, not incarceration; your parents who struck you once while you were growing up and regretted it forever thereafter.

Privacy is a human need. We aren't all planning crimes or acts of atrocity and those of us who are, who know, who have been forewarned, that their every word is being monitored, they won't be caught by tapping their phones and reading their e-mails (anyone ever hear of this thing they've got called 'code'?). Privacy is where we maintain our sanity, sharing our shames with people we honour; sharing our wildest, most villainous thoughts in print or by vicarious absorption of books, films and TV shows; it's where we fantasise because we're grown-up enough to know that acting out our fantasies would be wrong, wrong, wrong.

We need privacy, not to keep our secrets in, but to nourish our individuality.

You want to read my mind? Lock me up now. You aren't going to like it. I hate to end this with a quote by the artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, Prince, but "...then, give me the electric chair for all my future crimes."

"Yeah"

Heroism is private, too, by the way...

Last chance to fight EU Data Retention

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