EU Data Retention Law

The European Parliament adopted today by 378 votes in favor, 197 against and 30 abstentions a directive on data retention in first reading. This means that every traffic and location data generated by sms, telephony and internet but not the content of the information communicated will be saved for a period of six months up to two years.

This directive is seriously flawed for several reasons. First, the communication companies will have to pay for everything, especially storage devices, retention and transmission of data. We all know that there will be no other option than to raise prices and let the customers pay the bill.

Not all means of communication are affected. Public phone communication for example can also be saved but its not possible to know the caller. A communication between two public phones is as secure as it was before.

What if the terrorists are using proxies ? What if they buy cellphones from outside the EU and use them inside ? What if they use public internet cafes ? Wireless LAN ? Anonymous remailers ? Nothing will change.

So, what do we gain from this directive ? We may be able to find out when a terrorist communicated with someone else if he is using a device that was registered by him or if he uses his own internet connection without a proxy / encryption.

The only thing that’s sure is that the EU citizens will have to pay the bill for a directive that is flawed right from the beginning and not useful at all to counter terrorism.

If you are living in the EU let your representatives know that this directive is seriously flawed. You could also move to Norway or Switzerland for a change :)

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Wednesday December 14, 2005 -
Tags:data retention, privacy