Europe Moves To Track Phone and Net Use

An anonymous reader writes with a NYTimes piece on the early moves by European governments to implement an EU data retention directive. The governments of Germany and the Netherlands are initially proposing much more stringent programs than the EU directive requires. For example, the German proposal "would essentially prohibit using false information to create an e-mail account, making the standard Internet practice of creating accounts with pseudonyms illegal." The Times notes that, early days as it is, nevertheless some people involved in the issue are "concerned about a shift in policy in Europe, which has long been a defender of individuals' privacy rights."

That'll be real popular around here...

...would essentially prohibit using false information to create an e-mail account, making the standard Internet practice of creating accounts with pseudonyms illegal.

Slashdot posters TubGirlFan and IHeartGoatse adamantly expressed their opposition to the plan.

Re:That'll be real popular around here...

That's ridiculous. I don't trust any free e-mail service provider with my information. In fact, I never provide real information unless I have to make a payment or something. I just don't trust Hotmail, Yahoo, Google, or any website with any real information.

Fictitious Email Accounts

How about an out-of-EU mail forwarding service that receives and forwards emails between senders and recipients.

So for example if Mr. EU wants to send an email to "[e-mail]", he would email to "[e-mail]".

Re:Fictitious Email Accounts

I think finding ways around this is all well and good, but the question is why is our society moving so intently towards a system when the citizens NEED to do it, in order to feel safe.

I have said on several occasions, that we will find ourselves in trouble, when technology finally allows for constant surveillance of every member of society everywhere, all the time. Given historical and current precedents, it's logical to assume that once such capacity exists, it will be rapidly implemented.

I have this cold chill down my spine, telling me that perhaps Hitler was right about the 1000-year-Reich, but was just off by a few decades. After all, total surveillance will finally allow the government to fulfill what seems to be its chief purpose anyway - maintaining the status quo indefinitely.

Inevitability

Mankind has demonstrated, again and again, that if something can be done then it will, eventually, be done. Whatever justification is supplied for these directives the bottom line is: the bottom line. Information (eg. network logs) creates data. Data can be made to say anything. There is money to be made in making data say what the people with money want it to say. If justice is ever enforced it is a secondary consequence. The primary goal is always to allocate money to promote someone's bottom line.

The common users in Europe will simply need to accept that there are now new sets of standards by which authorities can meddle in the affairs of the public. Either initiate a revolution or adjust behavior accordingly.

The EC is there to undermine national constitution

Pro corporate and pro-fascist extremists want to make the EU into the same ultra-right regime in place in the US.

They had a problem though, National constitions and common law throughout much of Europe is simply too "liberal" to allow this.

The solution, of course, is to make a new "supranational" government for europe which is designed from the ground up to be accountable only to the moneyed elite like Rupert Murdoch.

The solution for the people is to either resign themselves to the institution of a new tyrrany, or to pull their support for the EC and let them sit and sputter.

If i were european, i'd go for the latter.

Re:The EC is there to undermine national constitut

Well.. the EU parliament is elected and the EU Commission is appointed from elected officials in each country. The EU is not in itself a government - it only has the power granted to it by the member states, so if it's trying to make more restrictive laws it's because *your* elected government wants them to.

Note also that it's the EU that successfully blocked software patents despite lots of lobbying from vested interests (well, the commission - remember, your government - wanted them, and the parliament - directly elected - sad get lost.. multiple times).

It's got a long way to go before it's nearly as sold out as the US system is.

Re:The EC is there to undermine national constitut

Should have read TFA also. This is clear that the EU is *not* trying to implement this it's the *individual governments* that are going the draconian route - so your argument goes out of the window completely.

Guv'ment is waking up

to the fact that the internet gives a voice to those that dissent, and that can't be allowed to go unchecked else the powers that be might be upsurped. Doesn't matter who it is or where it's at, Governement is Government.

Odd...

I find the monitoring of citizens location during every moment of a cell phone call to be a bit more frightening than not being able to use false data to register an email address. Why'd the pseudonym get bigger billing, as it were?

early days as it is

People need to get involved early on to make sure things like this don't become exactly what the fear. The article shouldn't be suprised that privacy advocates are getting involved early. Glad to see it, personally.

"It's totally unenforceable and would never work."

There's the million-dollar phrase. I wonder if these EU legislators really understand how the Internet works. Those who wish to use emails, telephones, etc. for nefarious purposes will find a work-around. In the end, this legislation will only punish the grandmothers, kids, e-novices, and clueless users who simply tried to sign up for a junk email account. Joe Terrorist will be using encrypted communications and the like - stuff that already requires a team of specialists to track. So even if this legislation passes, you'll still need special enforcement units to track the real bad guys - exactly where we are now. Sounds like a lot of time, money, and hassle for a false sense of security.

Re:"It's totally unenforceable and would never wor

"The black hats make mistakes, too"

What black hats?

It seems a little 1984-ish to somehow claim there is an enemy "out there" and we need to enact a more draconian central government with more powers to somehow take on this unnamed enemy.

Do you see the problem? As long as no one will name the black hats, you can claim a constant war, and every time some random violence strikes, governments can claim the "black hats" are getting more and more clever and that even more laws need to be enacted.

Meanwhile, are we any safer today than in the year 2000? It appears we aren't. And worse, we keep putting more restrictions on people based on some crazy nutty idea of where a terrorist might or could strike. And every time you do that, you force this mythical bad guy to strike in a different way, which requires more and more restrictions.

It's a flawed way of thinking. You cannot guess even a fraction of the infinite ways to screw up a civilization. And I'm not sure I want to live in a world like that anyway.

Frankly there has never been a government trustworthy enough to give what amounts to unlimited access to our personal lives on the off chance that someone may be a terrorist. Worse, there's no proof that this type of intrusions into our lives has even a small impact on making safer.

dammed if you do, dammed if you don't

At first glance one would think this would open the door quite wide for the internet sale of tinfoil hats, but a savvy consumer would then "enter email address here" and realize...

They know you know!

quid pro quo

making the standard Internet practice of creating accounts with pseudonyms illegal

Right. As soon as they solve that whole spam problem and those personal data theft issues, then i'll consider not being able to change addresses at will

Ah, yes. "Only for the public good."

And OUR noble selves will never misuse or abuse this power.

Of course, sooner or later, the power, once created, falls into less-than-noble hands...

"You would rip up every law to get at the devil. And when you have cornered the devil, and he turns on you, where will you hide, all the laws being flat?"

Huge amount of Data

Will such a huge amount of data really be useful? Depending on how its organized, if you have the logs of millions of users, will you realistically be able to sort through it all for whatever safety/prevention measures the government claims this is for?

Either way this is a huge violation of one's right to privacy.

Socialism

Yep. It's socialism at it's "finest".

Red herring

This proposal is like many other similar ones a red herring. The article shows that the NYT doesn't understand EU politics.

You see, when you have 27 member states that have a veto right on nearly everything the name of the game is haggling and compromise. It works like this: Member state A wants X that member state B is reluctant to agree upon. A then rallies member state C and D to put forward a preposterous proposal Y that shocks member states A, E, F and G. Then the negotiations begin and imagine that, member state A is willing to give up Y if it gets X. B is now under pressure from A, C, D, E, F and G to agree to X.

This is more likely a play for reducing fishing quotas or something similar. It is important to remember that the stated proposals are seldom what they seem to be and are always preposterous. Even if a proposed bill is vaguely on-topic, it starts with an extreme suggestion in order to allow a compromise solution. It's just the way it is played and it actually works very well.

The down side is of course that people not familiar with how things work in Brussels tend to get upset over the first batch of radical proposals.

An obvious power grab

You know how they justify things like this because criminals and terrorists are allegedly more saavy and powerful than ever thanks to "technology?" You look at the sort of weapons and tools that the governments of the first world countries have today, and the power disparity is getting greater. Shit, some of the weapons our military gets these days in the United States are just sick. Seriously, the governments of the world are just afraid of the fact that today the individual has some new power that is still largely harmless. They can't have that because it might mean evolution, not revolution. A slow, but steady push away from the powers that be.

Wait, does this mean...

If somebody already has a "falsified" e-mail/IM account, would these new rules force that person to create a new one with the "real" information? Or is this only restricted to people making new ones if these retention laws go through?

(Just curious, as I may be going to Ireland for a while soon.)

The Problem: The People

The problem is that the vast majority of people I talk to don't see the government as a threat. The idea that the government is there to help is completely accepted over here. In fact, people get upset when the government doesn't take care of something (up to the point where they demand the government take action about money people lost on investments, or salaries of top executives perceived to be too high).

The idea that the government could harm its subjects is completely foreign, apart from quips about the gov't collecting too much tax or the politicians playing their own games, rather than listening to the people. Certainly, if the government says that some programme is intended to protect us from black hats, that's what it will do. Only the opposition and a bunch of paranoid lunatics would tell you otherwise.

The point is that, even if, and that's a big if, the government has the best interest of its subjects in mind, that doesn't mean the programmes it proposes will have the best effect. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist, you only have to realize that (1) just because someone is a politician doesn't mean they can't put their own interests above other people's, and (2) just because people mean well doesn't mean they're omniscient. In other words, things can go wrong. At some point, they will. Therefore, it is imperative to not just accept whatever the government says is good, but to stay informed, to look at things critically, and to make your own decisions.

Doesn't surprice me.

What The Netherlands propagate is their own use for many years to tap each and any phone call by Israeli black boxes while signing contracts that forbid the same government from inspecting what is going on in these black boxes. The Dutch government think this is the best thing to do.

During WWII the Dutch government was as zealous about these things as they are now and had none whatsoever problem in sharing their records on Jewish and other wanted people with the NAZIS. The current political generation behaves not really different from that time so don't look strange if they sell out their populace again.

FALSE Information???

essentially prohibit using false information to create an e-mail account

What about using no information whatsoever to create an e-mail account? Last time I checked, you could just up and make an account on a whim. I have dozens on my domain, all of which have no false information, nor any true information. All they have is a username and password.

A post 9/11 world, great for pre 2000 legislation

This idea dates back to begin 2000. At that time the UK national criminal inteligence service argued for it. In a plan that I dont think was intended for publication it concluded: "There is a convergence of issues. Communications data is of crucial importance to Law Enforcement, and the Intelligence and Security Agencies but our needs are in conflict with existing legislation arising from data protection provisions and ECHR. In addition, there is significant commercial pressure to delete data. There are also significant public policy issues to address. It is an area requiring prompt attention."

Thats "European Convention on Human Rights". It has an article on how invasions upon someones privacy should be proportional. Keeping traffic data on everyone in Europe could be considdered disproportional.

Somehow the proponents forgot to mention that bit when they lobbied for this idea. First at the G8, then at the EU commision. The procedure the commision used for this legislation would have kept the decision out of the EU parlaiment. This is where the accusation of "policy laundering" comes from. The pressure to pass legislation increased after the Madrid train bombings, leading some people to mistake this law for a reaction to terrorism or something. I dont know why the text always had to mention it was directed at "terrorism and serious crime", isn`t terrorism a serious crime? Proponents were fearmongering using very scary crimes that were solved using traffic data. (So why the new legislation if you can solve crimes...?) And everyone was saying that the bill, which would go to the telco`s as NCIS had first suggested, would be that high.

The EU parlaiment argued is should get a say, so its civil liverties commisions got to work and... then the two big party blocks reached a deal behind closed doors. This was done under the threat from the commision to pass legislation without any input from parlainment. They can do that, the procedure is explained in this map of the codecision procedure [europa.eu]. I am not kidding, thats the real thing. And the threat was to stay outside of that map... anyway. The version that was passed allowed national governments some freedom in setting their legislation so some countries will be less bad.

tracking political dissidents

The standard justifications of fighting terrorism and child pornography are total bullshit. The real reason behind creepy and anti-democratic proposals like this are tracking of political dissidents. A simple proof is the fact that such controversial proposals are being discussed by some "representatives" to begin with while the vast majority of citizens are strongly opposed to them.

as tough as it may be

disc: my post is ONLY about this email issue.

this is rediciolous, bad and unwanted. but calling it fascism is rediciolous also. why? we just experience a normal transition from something "new" into something "standard". email ist mainstream since when? a relatively short time. now govs do notice that email is so common, it has to be reglemented. like old school snail mail. if you want to write a letter, the recipient has to have a real address. there are workarounds like co., postboxes and whatnot, but these workarounds will build up with e-mail just the same. the sender does not need to be identified for snail mail, but that's just a detail.

don't get me wrong, i hate this, i thought THIS time we might adopt a new media/ technique in a free way, but we haven't since thousands of years, why should we now?

now to something different. things ARE going wrong with europe, especially with germany. "our" gov is proposing a law that allows the police to spy our private pc with trojan horses. this is no joke: an interview with the german home secretary (sorry, in german). [www.taz.de]. there is a law proposal on it's way to ban so called "killer games" like counterstrike even for adults, producing and selling those games would be illegal (which is SO damn stupid, since germany is on it's way to establish itself as a good place for game developers, see crysis). in a few years (i think two) our travelling passports WILL contain biometric information, our passports will follow for sure. i could go on and on for a long time, but these few topics should give you the picture.

so, no more "old europe" anymore, we're about to completely abandon our ancient greek legacy (where democracy and the like originally came from). the reconnaissance is over, until the next great breakdown, but when that happens i WILL stand up beeing a smartass and say: "We told you so..."

US influence

Mod me flamebait, but hear the facts first:

* Germany used to be very liberal in hacking laws
* We had (well, on paper we still have), strong privacy protection laws
* Thanks to CCC and others, German officials used to be somewhat educated in many privacy and general computing matters

Now it's not much of a secret that our new government, especially Mrs. Merkel, is very much more US-leaning than the previous one (which, for all its failures, at least kept us out of the stupid Iraq war). Ever since the government changed, we get stuff like this, which 5 years or so ago I would've expected from the US, but never from my home country.

She isn't as bad as Blair, but Merkel is another state leader sitting up and begging at Bush's table. She's the reason I care for US politics, because at most a year later, someone from her following will propose something similar over here. I wish we had a proper chancellor again, instead of this cardbox stand-in.

I think it is good

People will be less concerned to be bad things, under their name. It is more civilized anyway. I like it. Eventually, it may be a simple way to completely avoid unsolicited mail.

Um

To set the sensationalistic title right, from TFA (emphasis mine):

"European Union countries have until 2009 to put the Data Retention Directive into law, so the proposals seen now are early interpretations. But some people involved in the issue are concerned about a shift in policy in Europe,"

In democratic parliaments representatives keep proposing "something" all the time. Even crazy and unacceptable ideas. The point is that 90% of these ideas are never approved (not enough votes).

Never gonna happen...

German politicians will drop this as soon as they realize that

• data retention can be too easily circumvented (think of public phones, internet cafes, ...) and even if it could not be circumvented, it would only help to solve about 0.006% of all crimes committed
• this directive does not need to be implemented because it already violates European human rights conventions and rulings by the European Court of Justice (Ireland already sues against it, BTW)
• the implementation of this directive would be a violation of at least six German laws and "basic laws" (ie. the German constitution)
• the government would have to pay for the costs or get sued by Telcos and ISPs otherwise (guess it'll be at least several billion Euros per year)

I guess, this directive will never become law, or only long enough for some constitional court to rule it unconstitutional. As some other poster points out, it's more likely that this is just some politicians flexing their muscles. david

Police State Forever

Isn't it all too obvious by now? We ALREADY live in a police state, which WE built, and it will last FOREVER.

Think of it this way, americans left england to avoid taxation (on tea), only to create a country where everything is taxed anyways (sales tax, even on tea). We have created what we hated.

Now, think of modern day, where we are ruled by fear in our everyday lives. Back in the day the fear was simple, no physical pain. Nowadays we are run by different types of fear. Take for example, fear of expression. No longer can you go to a place where you are allowed to say whatever you want, without some sort of retaliation. In a work environment, people are afraid of saying anything that involves an opinon for FEAR of losing their job. WE have created this fear onto others because we no longer know how to tolerate others behaviors, EVEN if they are jokes. In a country where we are afraid of saying a joke, something meant to brighten people's lives, we've become afraid to do something as simple as that. Just constant outcries of "I'm offended, thats not nice" running rampant to the point where WE the people have taken OUR OWN FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

Now, onto the right of privacy. Sure people argue and cry about how invasion of privacy is wrong, but what is being done, and what can be done? NOTHING. Sure, lets speak of "revolution", oh wait. NO, thats considered conspiracy, and you can easily disappear without anyone even knowing nowadays (disappear from work? "wheres bob" oh he was fired, meh oh well) friends and family will have the only suspicion, and what can they do? Report it to the police thats OWNED by the GOVERNMENT. Any signs of a revolution will be squashed, because lets face it, governments already know more about our privacy than they EVER knew back in the day, and this effect is IRREVERSIBLE.

It is our own fault, and it's already too late. Talk about revolution as much as you like, but now we live in a day where we are even fearful of physical pain, and have equal fears of nonphysical pain and punishments.

How we've "evolved" from fearing physical to psychological pain, is a wonderful question, but seriously, who's going to step up and "lead" a country to war before they finish stripping all privacy? Perhaps it's already been attempted many times already? Anything that becomes slightly popular, the government will know, and will be all over it and ready to make it disappear.

WE have created our own cages, where will you be running to when they install cameras in every home? How fearful are you, can you stand up for what you believe in? "Anonymous Cowards" (practically everyone on the internet is 'Anonymous' from a technical sense), unite as you like and talk about revolution. Best of luck

What an article...

I'd definitely recommend reading the article. The best part concerns Germany:

"This is an incredibly bad thing in terms of privacy, since people have grown up with the idea that you ought to be able to have an anonymous e-mail account," Mr. Fleischer said. "Moreover, it's totally unenforceable and would never work."

Ok, now that the thing is incredibly bad and would never work, the article gives Mr. Fleischer's explanation on how to do it:

Mr. Fleischer said the law would have to require some kind of identity verification, "like you may have to register for an e-mail address with your national ID card."

Like imagine rows of grudging Germans waiting in a perfect line to register their non-anonymous private e-mails. Ironic?

Mr. Fleischer said: "It's ironic, because Germany is one of the countries in Europe where people talk the most about privacy. In terms of consciousness of privacy in general, I would put Germany at the extreme end."

Ironic indeed if you ask yourself which end is this "extreme end" and what kind of consciousness of privacy is in question. Hint: I have heard (here in Germany) with my own ears a friend complaining to a friend: "You behave very individualistically lately!" [translation mine].

And what about Charlie Root?

Will he also have to provide his id? He can usually be found at: [e-mail] ;)

Re:Great...

From article post to first comment - Godwin's Law invoked in 3 minutes. Is that a record here?

Re:it's just politics

Reasonable people are almost by definition less vocal than the completely irrational. Please advise your reasonable people to give voice to their rationality.

OMG!! T3H PARRALLELLLZ!!!

Come on. All Germany is proposing is the email law. Where exactly are the parallels between this and Nazi Germany huh?

Wrong, wrong, wrong...

Slashdot doesn't hate Americans for being Americans. Slashdot hates knee-jerk fascists. It's just seems like we hate the US because, most of the time, it beats out the rest of the world in the quality & quantity of our K-JFs. But somedays the EU feels the need to get back into the race...

Re:Great...

How can this be insightful?

I live in Germany and I'm really afraid that civil rights will be cut back too far and I don't like the recent development. Yes, our minister of the interior, Mr. Schaeuble is a total lunatic and goes too far. I don't like him or the laws that were passed lately. But the whole world has been acting crazy in a deluded sense of improving protection since 9/11 and I think I don't need to point out that the anglo-saxon countries have been spearheading the recent hysteria about terrorism.
Of course, this is no excuse for Germany to cut back civil rights and I will criticize that anytime but Nazi Germany was yet another dimension of evil.

If you want to discuss this matter seriously, than don't hide beneath anonymity and provide some honest arguments!