[declan at well.com: [Politech] E.U. Parliament votes to force "data retention" on telecom, Net firms [priv]]

[R. A. Hettinga]

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 Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 14:24:50 -0500
 To: "Philodox Clips List" <clips at philodox.com>
 From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
 Subject:  [declan at well.com: [Politech] E.U. Parliament votes to force
  "data retention" on telecom, Net firms [priv]]


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  Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 17:20:03 +0100
  From: Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org>
  To: cypherpunks at jfet.org
  Subject: [declan at well.com: [Politech] E.U. Parliament votes to force
    "data retention" on telecom, Net firms [priv]]
  User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i
  Sender: owner-cypherpunks at jfet.org

  Just as well, I can spare writing up a blurb.

  ----- Forwarded message from Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com> -----

  From: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
  Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 08:00:49 -0800
  To: politech at politechbot.com
  Subject: [Politech] E.U. Parliament votes to force "data retention" on
   telecom, Net firms [priv]
  User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (Macintosh/20050716)

  Previous Politech messages:
  http://www.politechbot.com/2005/12/05/european-data-retention/
  http://www.politechbot.com/2005/09/23/european-commission-proposes/
  http://www.politechbot.com/2005/06/16/feds-contemplate-forcing/

  -------- Original Message --------
  Subject: EU Parliament agrees to data retention
  Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 16:20:00 +0100
  From: Ralf Bendrath <bendrath at zedat.fu-berlin.de>
  Reply-To: bendrath at zedat.fu-berlin.de
  To: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>

  Declan, something for Politech? Very bad news from Europe.

  The European Parliament this morning voted in favour of a backroom deal
  that had been made between the two big parties in Brussels and the Council
  of Ministers, currently chaired by the UK. The deal completely ignored the
  amendmends proposed by the Parliament's Rapporteur and by the Justice and
  Civil Liberties Committee that was (well - officialy) in charge of the
  process. After a hot debate and a number of signs of cracks in the party
  blocks, a majority of 378 parliamentarians voted in favour of mandatory
  retention of telecommunications data, 197 against, 30 abstained.

  This is in short what we will get now:

  - retention of telephone and internet connection data (including email
  addresses) and location data for mobile phone calls
  - no harmonisation of the retention period (6 to 24 months but longer is
  allowed: Poland wants 15 years)
  - no harmonisation of cost reimbursement for the needed investments on the
  providers' side
  - no limitation to certain types of crimes for which access is allowed
  - retention of unsuccessful call attempts
  - no independent evaluation
  - no extra privacy safeguards
  - follow-up committee without representation from civil rights organisations

  Civil liberties organizations, consumers organizations and all the telco
  industry associations as well as journalists associations had been
  fighting like hell against this major and unprecedented surveillance plan
  until the last minute. We did not win (the outcome is in fact the worst
  possible, exactly what the UK home affairs minister Clarke wanted), but we
  at least raised a lot of awareness and disturbed the conservative and
  social-democrat party lines. But the UK council presidency had pushed so
  hard after the London bombings that this directive will enter the EU
  history as the one which took the shortest time ever from the first
  Commission draft to the final vote (less than three months - normally they
  need years).

  The next steps will be the adoption by the Council of Ministers (before
  christmas) and then the implementation process into national laws. There
  will be challenges to this plan before the constitutional courts. I am
  pretty sure that the German constitutional court will not like it, as it
  recently had ruled unconstitutional a major eavesdropping plan on phone
  calls - and that one was only directed at suspicious persons, whereas the
  EU directive applies to every single communication of all 450 Million
  inhabitants of the EU.

  More information, including recordings of the EP debate, is available at
  <http://wiki.dataretentionisnosolution.com/>.

  Ralf
  (European Digital Rights, www.edri.org)

  _______________________________________________
  Politech mailing list
  Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
  Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)

  ----- End forwarded message -----
  --
  Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
  ______________________________________________________________
  ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
  8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

  [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature
 which had a name of signature.asc]

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 --
 -----------------
 R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
 The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
 "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
 [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
 experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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