EU Sues Sweden, Demands ISP Data Retention 315
Death Metal writes "The EU passed the Data Retention Directive years ago, a law that demands ISPs and search engines hold onto data long enough to help the cops (but not long enough to cause privacy problems). But Sweden never passed it into national law, and the European Commission has now sued the country to make sure a bill appears."
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Data retention is just a Big Brother tool.
You don't catch terrorists with this, nor pedophiles.
And yes, I emailed Osama. Now what? They don't log the contents of an email.
And if I gpg/pgp the email, what then?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Because if just about everyone starts using encryption, the people handling serious matters (like terrorism or child-porn) will have their task rendered nigh-impossible. Right now they focus on encrypted data, but if everything goes encrypted, they will never be able to decrypt everything.
That's another reason why too much enforcement against online copyright infringement is moronic, as it is an incentive for people whose actions, while illicit, are very benign, to encrypt their data. And that's one of the reasons why such a system as the recent French three-strikes law haven't been implemented (yet?) in the USA, despite intense lobbying from the MAFIAA: the NSA opposes it.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
By the same argument: most crime is organised behind locked doors, therefore all non-criminal citizens should leave their doors unlocked and open so as not to hinder the police in their endeavours.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Terrorists are now pro-freedom?
Dammit, I've been BSed by our governments!
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Terrorists are now pro-freedom?
Dammit, I've been BSed by our governments!.."
Doesn't it ever occur to Americans that Terrorists ARE interested in freedom? THEIR freedom!
The only reason people are trying to kill Americans is that they think America has been oppressing them for generations. You can argue about whether this is a true belief or not, but that is what is going on in their heads. No one except Bush and Cheney actually believes that, for some reason, goat farmers living on a hillside in Pakistan are so involved in political theory that they hate the theoretical concept of a capitalist two-party 'democracy' and are willing to travel half-way round the world to attack it.
What they see is a foreign country (used to be Britain, now America) coming into their country and supporting local tyrants in order to ensure the flow of oil, or to suppress any left wing politics and 'workers rights'. Eventually, they get pissed off. If the US troops, or the local warlord the US supports, kill enough locals, their family survivors are going to be REALLY pissed off.
There is a simple answer to stopping all 'terrorism', but it involves stopping having foreign-based armies, negotiating for access to raw materials, and accepting that sometimes other countries don't want to sell you things. So that isn't going to happen any day soon......
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And then Muhammad later went to war with the Jewish tribes with which he had previously formed political bonds, because they had violated the agreement, and with Christians because they refused to respect his religious choice.
I'm no Muslim, in fact I'm an atheist and think the whole business of organised religion has been proven by history to be dangerous beyond compare, but I don't think it's fair to say that the Muslims in these countries are betraying the word of Muhammad just because those were his init
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been telling that to people since 2001. I'm a statistician. Actually, I went through the hassle to actually figure out the chance to be killed one way or another. Terrorist attacks are very close to lightning striking and some forms of freak accidents that land you a well deserved Darwin Award.
In a nutshell, if you're afraid of terrorists, never ever board a plane or even dare to use a car. Statistically, you're already dead when you enter a car (if you consider terrorist attacks a likely form of death).
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The rationale is simple: everyone thinks they're a better than average driver. Everyone thinks *they're* good enough to stop bad things from happening. Take that (even illusory) control away from them, they get afraid.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sues Sweden? And what if they don't obey?
That's a really good question. I'm guessing there's something for this in those 10000+ pages of international treaties that form the EU.
What's interesting though, that this is the only law they react so harshly to. They usually warn a couple of times, prod gently, give deadlines, give more deadlines, and not take it to court without warning. Of course those are laws not directly related to their emerging police state [wikipedia.org].
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They usually warn a couple of times, prod gently, give deadlines, give more deadlines, and not take it to court without warning.
Are you sure they did get a few warnings?
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Are you sure they did get a few warnings?
Hungary got warnings about banning gene-modified crops. Fortunately, we were not the only ones to do so, and for good reason.
See here [auswaertiges-amt.de] for some details. Also, I was told the corn in question was modified to protect itself from a bug not found in Central Europe, yet they still wanted to force it on us.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since the EU is very "democratic" (meaning the -mostly appointed- ministers of foreign affairs of the EU countries make the real decisions*), Sweden has a choice : pass the law, or leave the EU (meaning switching away from the euro, no more free trade, ...)
In the EU, you only have to convince 12 non-elected commisioners to create a dictatorship. Individual member countries have long lost control over both their own law and their territorial sovereignty. They cannot legally say no to the EU.
Many Europeans (imho rightly) fear what's going to happen with this body. It's already created a segregated society in the locations where it's located : Brussels, Strasbourg, Luxenburg and Frankfurt. There is zero contact between the fonctionnaires and the local population, which is logical in a way, since they're an unelected body.
* yes they're appointed -indirectly- by an elected body, I know. Still it's not the same as a real democracy.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
* There is no set procedure on leaving the EU
* Sweden does not have the Euro as its currency
* The free trade agreements does not hinge on membership
* Yes, the whole commission bit needs some serious looking over
---
* Appointed indirectly by an elected body? Sort of like the electoral college? That puts the US in a very interesting light.
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Wouldn't Sweden have to start using the Euro before they could switch away from it?
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While the governing of the EU is bad, it can't quite turn into a dictatorship by convincing the commisioners. The commissioners don't make the decisions, they propose legislation. The Council (one minister per country) makes the decisions, although nowadays the parliament (the only elected body in the EU) has to agree. The parliament tends to be very weak-willed though, and when they say no, the council makes some minor modifications and sends it back to parliament, most of the time it goes through.
If the E
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If Sweden loses, fines would be imposed.
What would be interesting is if Sweden would refuse on grounds that it is unconstitutional. Even if the ruling coalition wanted to, two separate parliaments and a referendum has to approve a change to the constitution. I think that lagradet objected to the radio surveillance agency law (FRA-lagen) on those grounds.
Someone who has some questions to answer is Thomas Bodstrom of the previous Labour govt, who pushed for this quite aggressively and actually managed to get
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, I'm out of there, watching the debacle from the outside. Wait, I'm in the UK. Oh noes! I will have to move countries again!
Make a trip to Ireland and thank everyone you meet for voting down the Lisbon Treaty. Right now, they're the only ones stopping the bureaucratic machine.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
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You'd vote for the Lisbon Treaty? Really?
Have you actually read it? Do you know what it does?
I haven't, because it's 250 pages of legalese and amendments to previous treaties. If we are going to have a constitution for the EU, I'd prefer something like the American constitution. Short, simple, entirely self-contained. And still "complex" enough for endless arguments between gun-grabbers and gun-nuts over whether the 2nd Amendment refers to the right of the people to keep and bear arms not being infringed, o
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sues Sweden? And what if they don't obey?
That's a really good question. I'm guessing there's something for this in those 10000+ pages of international treaties that form the EU.
What's interesting though, that this is the only law they react so harshly to. They usually warn a couple of times, prod gently, give deadlines, give more deadlines, and not take it to court without warning. Of course those are laws not directly related to their emerging police state [wikipedia.org].
Sweden has recently passed the IPRED law where a copywrite holder can request from the court for the ISP to hand over IP information about their customers if they are suspected of illigal file sharing. So basically Copyright holders are the police now. Or something like that.
so what happened.
http://www.thelocal.se/19478/20090515/
Several ISP's decided not to store their information about their customers because they did not want to hand over their customers information to 3rd parties.
So now Sweden is going to create a new law where they force ISP's to save the user's data (see article above).
So why is EU putting pressing the issue by sueing. Its because these copywrite lobbiests are trying to save their business model by getting involved in politics and changing laws everywhere.
EU elections are on june 7th. Im voting for the pirate party. Not because I necessarily want them to win but I would like them to get some seats in the parlement so they can question some of these issues that are invading on everyones privacy.
I could go on forever. And the funny thing is. Nobody is in favor of these laws. So why are they getting passed. I thought these were democratic nations.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
"Sues Sweden? And what if they don't obey?"
All the rest of us start sending them all our asylum seekers mwuhahahaaa!
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
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If what I said wasn't meant to be taken seriously at all anyway, the facts really don't apply.
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Well it's whoever got sued last gets the asylum seekers... it's basically like a game, you have to try get laws passed that you know someone else won't want, so they get sued, and then they get the asylum seekers... but then you've just got to hope that they don't have a law up their sleeves to introduce that you don't want, cuz then they all get sent to you. Polics. It's fun, cuz it's playing with peoples lives.
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Could you please see this law in perspective for a moment:
1) This law requires the ISP to hold identification data for only 6 months - most ISPs keep it longer than that.
2) The only way to have access to this data is to have a court order.
3) I've never heard Slashdot complain about telcos that save call records for the exact same purpose because in the end we just want our privacy and not make it impossible for police to do their jobs.
My $.02
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And of course, going by your logic, there's not /possible/ way these powers could /ever/ be abused, right? Right?
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Could you please see this law in perspective for a moment:
1) This law requires the ISP to hold identification data for only 6 months - most ISPs keep it longer than that.
[ citation needed ] Before the data retention directive, this time was limited by the privacy directive. That one specifies that such data may only be kept as long as strictly necessary for billing and general administrative purposes.
Moreover, it's not just about identification data, but also about who emails/calls whom when and from where.
And collecting all of this data [computerweekly.com] costs about £45.8m for the UK according UK government estimates.
2) The only way to have access to this data is to have a court order.
That depends on the Swedish proposed implementation (with whic
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And if I gpg/pgp the email, what then?
Then they'll sue you for that. Unauthorized use of encryption software is illegal in, for example, France.
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I don't know why you people cry so loud. This is just normal EU procedure: First the countries agree on a law, then all countries have a period of time to implement this law in their national .
If they don't, they get a warning.
The country is given time to respond on why it has not implemented the law (lots of reasons are possible) and opportunity to make its case.
After another period, there is a fine to pay.
This happens for all laws.
If you don't like that particular law, cry about the EU law, not that Swede
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It would be interesting if Sweden's EU parliamentarians voted for or against the law in the first place
30% of the Swedish Parlamentarians voted for the directive, all of which were members of the then ruling Social Democrats. The strongest proponent were the Swedish Minister of Justice of the time, Thomas Bodstrom, who among other things said: "If the Parliament votes for it, that gives it a democratic surplus value - if they are against it I anticipate a ministerial decision"
..... and what their arguments were.
The argument pretty much went along these lines 'Sweden is a prime target for terrorists and without this they are going to bomb us i
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
For this reason there is no 99-page government proposal for the implementation of the Data Retention Directive, but for some reason you can already download the proposal [wikileaks.com] through the highly dependable Wikileaks network:
Both the directive and the government proposal states that the reasons for the comming law are terrorists and organized crime (human trafficing and narcotics). Although the law is intended to fight serious crime, the government states that it does not see any reason to limit what organizations can request information from the required logs.
Yes, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry has been invited to share their views on a law against terrorists and drug smugglers. Their opinion? Well, a 6 month retention plan might be too short, but generally they appreciate the proposal.
Does anyone wonder why the Pirate Party are winning more and more votes?
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Sues Sweden? And what if they don't obey?
An interesting question, about which the lawyer F. de Vries, former University lecturer in Constitutional Law at the University of Groningen, gave an interesting speech back in 2004, which you can find in Dutch at: http://www.rug.nl/Rechten/faculteit/overFaculteit/lezingVries [www.rug.nl]
He basically says that there is no reason Sweden should obey, since Europe actually has no authority over Swedish National affairs. It just appers th EU has "authority", but it created that on itself. And since no-one defines its
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And yes, I emailed Osama. Now what? They don't log the contents of an email.
Now they think that you may be worth watching.
Let us know how you get on with any upcoming flights you have booked, particularly to to US.
This is why we don't like the EU. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now lobbyists only have to bribe a handful of central political bastards to affect the whole of Europe.
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It's just a shame that Finland isn't the sort of haven that Sweden turned out to be, at least up until now; They would have never put up with this sort of interference
Re:This is why we don't like the EU. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now lobbyists only have to bribe a handful of central political bastards to affect the whole of Europe.
You apparently didn't follow the data retention directive farce at all. This was not brought about by "central political bastards", and the lobbyists were the various national governments. That directive was a wet dream of law enforcement agencies from all over Europe, and pushed through by the various national governments in the name of thinking of the terrorists and the children.
The rapporteur (Alexander Alvaro) of the directive in the European Parliament (EP) tried to tone it down, only to be backstabbed by the national governments (forming the EU Council of Ministers) that managed to pressure the large political groups in the EP behind his back to ignore his report and voting recommendations.
Alexander Alvaro was so disgusted with the whole circus that after the vote he had his name removed as rapporteur for the directive.
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Name em and shame em, where's the proof?
Re:This is why we don't like the EU. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the European Parliament seems to be pretty resistant to bribary compared to the rest of the Western world.
The problem is usually with the EU Council of Ministers who are the 'unelected' representatives of each member state and tend to ignore the Parliament if they don't like their decisions (As they did with the software patents issue.)
Thankfully the Parliament can overturn CoM decisions with a 2/3 majority and often do if they feel they've been screwed.
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That's the whole point of the EU; concentration of power.
One question: where have all of history's greatest Empires come from?
How very... (Score:2, Insightful)
democratic of them. Who would have thought a collection of nations creating a supranational government wouldn't infringe on the individual countries' rights?
Re:How very... (Score:4, Interesting)
And yet, for some reason, the one pan-european political party [libertas.eu] which is against this sort of supranationality, isn't getting much traction with the voters.
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Well that's a chicken and egg situation then.
Libertas are clearly working against a deadline, since elections are in June and the new Lisbon referendum in Ireland is later this year.
They need members, voting allies, and funds. And they're desperate to get them.
So they make questionable alliances, not out of shared idealogy, but out of a desperate "The enemy of my enemy is my temporary friend" mentality.
Unfortunately, large numbers of the voting public don't agree with this.
However, if the public had sided w
Re:How very... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe you'll discover that you simply cannot win in any democratic system...?
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You have to run yourself and get votes, rather than expecting for there to be someone else who agrees with everything you would stand for if you could be bothered to stand for it EXCEPT that they CAN be bothered to... but of course, we have other things we want to do with our lives. We get the people we deserve.
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One can try to piss in the ocean everyday as much as they like to try to turn it yellow, but even a lifetime's worth of work will likely do nothing.
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Err, yeah, but if you wanted the ocean yellow, but couldn't even be bothered to piss in it yourself, one would question quite how much it must really matter to you.
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Maybe you'll discover that you simply cannot win in any democratic system...?
Not only that, but the majority will always have that illusion. Absolutely brilliant.
Meanwhile, the two biggest parties will have free reign, as long as they piss the voters off equally.
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The only political opposition against this data retention came from the EU parliament. The real scum are the 'democratically' unelected European commission and the different national governments and police forces.
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democratic of them. Who would have thought a collection of nations creating a supranational government wouldn't infringe on the individual countries' rights?
Who would have thought a collection of nations agreeing on a law wouldn't set actions to make sure all countries are effectively implementing this law?
The EU would be toothless if the countries would be just promising things.
I never understood these policies... (Score:2)
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It's not the information that must be stored. Just Receiver/sender-information. And it's not only about data, voice calls are also included in the directive.
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Nope, governments are just here to create solutions. Not to check whether they are possible.
There's this old parable from good ol' soviet times. A mouse is being chased by a cat and runs up to the wise owl that everyone considered the wisest and most informed animals of the woods (let's ignore for a moment that owls eat mice, ok?). So the mouse desperately pleaded "Wise owl, the cat is chasing me and I have to escape, please tell me what to do!" The owl pondered long and hard and told the mouse "Spread your
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Well I'm going to put aside everything I know about how difficult voice recognition, esp without any pre-training of the software for your voice, apply that to all the different accents everyone has, and the difficulty even a human ear can have at understanding them all... and believe your claims... because that's the kind of stupidity I feel like exercising today.
Wow, can you really?!!!
First time? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Is this the first time the EU has sued a member state for not passing a law?
No. Not by a long shot.
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no, this is normal and happens often. I don't seeked for examples but one can read every time about EU commission actions againt member states for breaching/not implementing EU directives.
a famous one was a few years ago against Greece and Italy (not 100% sure, just google it if you're interested :P) because of the state debt (Maastricht Treaty was imo the legal base for this sueing)
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Nope. Austria was on the chopping block for the same reason [futurezone.orf.at] a month ago.
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Haha (Score:5, Informative)
Hehe, a bit funny considering the background. This is because the EU now noticed that ISP's are actually now not wanting to do any retention in Sweden, in turn due to the new IPRED law [wikipedia.org]. This is a way for them to partially dodge that law by getting less chances of being able to report users sharing copyright infringing work. The idea is that as their users are reported, they have hopefully already deleted the log entries. Why they are wanting to do that is in turn out of competition reasons. No ISP in Sweden want to be "the ISP where you can more easily get caught for copyright infringement when sharing files". You can read more about the case for one of those ISP's, Bahnhof, here [geek.com].
OK, I went off on a tangent there. What I think is funny is that the EU is only now paying attention and noticing Sweden didn't adopt that law. :-p It's so apparent that this is in response to all the more ISP's not caring for it, not because they have a check on what Sweden is doing. Or maybe they just don't care until certain laws are dodged in practice out of minimizing bureaucracy. It's hard to tell if it's due to incompetence or bureaucracy, but it's either of them.
But the same EU won't sue France for... (Score:5, Insightful)
...the three strikes law!
Wow!
Equality was the name of EU, wasn't it?
Sweden should show the middle finger to EU.
Its a pity it doesn't have any Rush Limbaughs there, one would be enough to shout hoarse about swedish nationality and violation of the same.
If i were the PM, i would take EU's action under advisement and in Brussels directly question the French about 3-strikes law which violates EU laws...
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Access to internet is a Fundamental Right as per EU.
The 3-strikes law directly violates a Fundamental Right.
The EU can and should sue France to overturn this law... but i don't think the French PM would overturn it, as he is very much enamoured of an ex-singer and an ex-model so much as to publicize it on 'net.
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A parliamentary amendment that said this was passed earlier this month, but that definitely does not mean that "the EU has decided so" -- new amendments mean the Commission has to approve the whole telecom package again before it can become a real law.
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He's the President?
I thought the French PM's were all powerful in a parlimentary democracy, and since he is sooo visible i thought he was PM...
Sorry about the the mistake. Really it was!
Who the hell is this Fillon guy?
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Wow!
Its not only confusing, but confusion itself will be confused when it sees this.
I have seen Yes,Minister and wondered, but this takes the cake.
How does your government get ANYTHING done at all?
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Yes Minister is a British show. What does that have to do with France?
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sue a country? (Score:3)
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If a country agrees to join a confederation, it must at some point forfeit some of its autonomy to the ruling body. If it doesn't like that deal and wants to secede, there are remedial actions [wikipedia.org] that may be taken to restore sovereignty.
For the UK... (Score:5, Funny)
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Ignore the first sentence, it's an old number as you can see when you look at the country specific batalions.
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Err, yeah, because that's what a 'union' is; a group of discrete and disparate entities all doing their own things with no overall direction or commonalities and without joining forces on issues...
(hint: the 'U' in 'EU' stands for 'Union')
Normal procedure (Score:4, Informative)
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...in subservience to a higher ruling power.
Thank god...
Oh! That's +5 Funny! Thanks for that...
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Any country that abrogates it's sovereignty in this manner isn't a country, but a vassal state, in subservience to a higher ruling power.
And how did "the country" receive the prerogative to rule upon people that a supranational entity like EU doesn't have? Conversely, if EU doesn't have the right to meddle into people's sovereignity, what gives "the country" the right to do that? EU is just one rung higher to a state, it's no less or more evil as your or my government. We're all vassals in subservience.
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No you live in the United States where the federal government which you vote for, can enact laws that affect the member states, and your state representative, which you also vote for, can do little or nothing about it .... sound familiar ....?
And Sweden was the one that proposed the law (Score:5, Interesting)
The interesting thing is that Sweden was one of the 4 countries that proposed the law (together with Ireland, France and the UK). It really drove its adoption hard, even though the first drafts of the text proposed by these countries were completely unworkable.
It took almost two years before the final text was drafted. The current version is much more readable and understandable than the first version. In the end a couple of unlikely countries took the lead in drafting the text. Even though some of these countries weren't very positive on the idea of having a data retention law, the civil servants sat down to create something that was what their political masters wanted and was technically realizable in practice.
Things that were for instance excluded were the requirements to log on a per packet basis the source and destination or to identify for http which adresses were visited.
How do I know? I was there and took part in the negotiations in the EU Council Working Group from day one to day last.
European Directive (European Law 101) (Score:5, Informative)
various options (Score:2)
Can the ISPs protest this during the trial? I suspect there are numerous thugs in the Swedish parliament may want to pass this bill anyway. So maybe the ISPs can fight this one for Sweden?
Can Sweden implement a toothless version of this bill? A single exception for protecting say users engaged in civil disobedience would nullify the directive. A similar line saying the ISP may charge extortionate prices for their logs might effectively nullify it.
If Sweden implements the directive, ISP still have techni
errr, you crazy? (Score:2)
a law that demands ISPs and search engines hold onto data long enough to help the cops (but not long enough to cause privacy problems).
Whatever you're smoking, it deserves to be illegal, if it isn't already. "not long enough to cause privacy problems" - excuse me? Storing my entire browsing and search history for six months does not cause privacy problems?
Privacy is not a question of storage durations, never has and never will be. If you keep a record of me visiting, say, "www.alcoholicsanonymous.com" at all, then that's a privacy problem right there. Six months or six hours doesn't make any difference to the fact that there's a privacy pr
So much for National (or State) Sovereignty (Score:3, Insightful)
This was a big area of debate before the EU formed: Just how much of autonomy and national identity must a country give up to be a member of the EU? What happens when an EU member (say, France, for instance), or a small coalition of countries, have a major influence on the EU Parliament and try to impose their values in conflict with the national traditional values? What happens if Turkey tries to impose it's values concerning drug use on the Netherlands? Why should France's or GB's values on privacy (or lack thereof) be imposed on Sweden?
In the United States of America, the individual States are supposed to be "sovereign" and all rights not specifically granted to the Federal Government are the province of the individual States. Over the years "creeping Federalism" has undermined the individuality, power and authority of the individual States. This has also been happening in in the EU. Sweden is technically a "Constitutional Monarchy". Did Swedes know that by joining the EU they gave away their Constitution?
Don't worry it'll be passed soon (Score:5, Interesting)
IAAS (I Am A Swede)
This directive will soon be passed. The reason this has taken so long is because it's an initiative taken by the previous party in lower (Social Democrats) and the current part(y|ies) (AKA The Alliance, moderates) in power doesn't like the leftists and the head of the judicial branch has been wining over this directive ever since day one. Nonetheless she is obligated to enforce the directive and says so herself. Even though she proclaims herself to be a integrity watchdog she's just as bad as the leftists.
Battle lost on that front.
The Pirate Party will however make it to the EU parliament this year and we can hope for some real change on these integrity issues.
Re:Why sue now? (Score:5, Interesting)
The law says that stored information can only be requested by the police or prosecutors if a serious crime has been committed (or the suspicion of a serious crime).
Hence a third party like RIAA cannot request information to file a suit according to the IPRED law.
Another law in Sweden, currently active, says that all identity information MUST immediately be DESTROYED when it is no longer required for completion of business transactions.
That's some fine politics there, Lou!
Re:Why sue now? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah, but you've missed the point. Currently, after the IPRED law the ISPs are deleting logs. After the Data Retention directive, they will be forced to preserve logs. The Data Retention directive only give police permission to get data from it. But IPRED requires them to hand over the logs they do have to the MAFIAA, all of them. Unless the Data Retention directive explicitly forbids that other laws give other permissions to the data in question, the MAFIAA got it just the way they want it. And that would be very, very unusual to put in law - just like one crime can violate separate laws, multiple laws can give permissions to different groups. And if you say "It'll never be abused that way" I got a bridge to sell you...
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>Unless the Data Retention directive explicitly forbids that other laws
>give other permissions to the data in question, the MAFIAA got it just
>the way they want it. And that would be very, very unusual to put in law
And yet that is exactly what the law says. Or rather, it says the data stored according to this law can ONLY be accessed and required for by police and other govermental authorities in investigations of more serious crimes. Not eben the ISP and others who store data themselves are allowe
Re:What does "help the police" mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to be under the impression that law enforcement agents are infallible and not susceptible to your average human's woes.
Of course we need law enforcement. Please point out to me who said we didn't. The problem lies in the mechanics that are supposed to make sure that nobody the police is supposed to 'catch' manages to actually become a member of the police.
In my opinion, management, be it of a corporation, a state or law enforcement, is more often than not corrupt. Such laws give these people more power over the people making law enforcement just another tool for the criminals to use.
THIS is the real danger of a police state. They are using our best weapon against us. THIS is what we must be sure to never allow.
The RIAA is a good example of how this whole thing is going wrong. Remember, all our laws are built upon a set of morals. We say it is wrong to kill. Therefore, manslaughter, murder and the like are covered by our laws. Yet quite a few 'modern' societies think its okay to have a death penalty.
In RIAA's case they argue that copying their products and making them available for free is theft. Many people might agree with that sentiment at first glance. Without wanting to get into semantics, the real problem her elies in the fact that an estimated 20% or more of our nations' populations participate in breaking this law.
The question now is thus: Morals are what we feel is right or wrong to do unto each other in our society. 20% or more of us feel its their right to download entertainment content. At what point will moral conform to public opinion? Is something wrong when 100% of the people do it? Is it wrong when 50% do it? 49%? When?
The whole system is fucked up. The system is being abused. That's just a hard fact. We are not against the system, we are against the abuse.
Re: (Score:2)
Me, I download movies and books since I don't have access to a library. If it's something I'd never ever buy and am curious about, I'll download it. Like Star Trek TOS is interesting now because of the movie, I'd watch it on TV but I don't have that either. I'm the sort of guy who will go in a book store, and read a whole book in a few hours. You know in a few years when more books, magazines and movies go pure digital libraries will be gone. Thanks to DRM.
No more loaning books or DVDs to your friends,
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In an ideal world, we wouldn't need police. People would be nice to each other and crime wouldn't happen.
...and in those circumstances, we wouldn't need laws or governments to enforce them which is... anarchy.
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"the thin blue line between freedom and anarchy"
Are you sure you meant to pick those two words?
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"You can't handle the truth!"
Good one, Colonel Jessep! :)
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Re:This is why "international governments" are bad (Score:5, Insightful)