Advisor To EU's Top Court Suggests German Bulk Data Retention Law Isn't Legal (techcrunch.com) 15
The battle between the appetites of European Union Member States' governments to retain their citizens' data -- for fuzzy, catch-all 'security' purposes -- and the region's top court, the CJEU, which continues to defend fundamental rights by reiterating that indiscriminate mass surveillance is incompatible with general principles of EU law (such as proportionality and respect for privacy) -- has led to another pointed legal critique of national law on bulk data retention. From a report: This time it's a German data retention law that's earned the slap-down -- via a CJEU referral which joins a couple of cases, involving ISPs SpaceNet and Telekom Deutschland which are challenging the obligation to store their customers' telecommunications traffic data. The court's judgement is still pending but an influential opinion put out today by an advisor to the CJEU takes the view that general and indiscriminate retention of traffic and location data can only be permitted exceptionally -- in relation to a threat to national security -- and nor can data be retained permanently. In a press release announcing the opinion of advocate general Manuel Campos Sanchez-Bordona, the court writes that the AG "considers that the answers to all the questions referred are already in the Court's case-law or can be inferred from them without difficulty"; going on to set out his view that the German law's "general and indiscriminate storage obligation" -- which covers "a very wide range of traffic and location data" -- cannot be reconciled with EU law by a time limit imposed on storage as data is being sucked up in bulk, not in a targeted fashion (i.e. for a specific national security purpose).
This is about choosing. (Score:4, Insightful)
Data retention is a bit like keeping your logfiles indefinitely "for security", only it doesn't actually improve security because looking at it is too hard. Same reason why data mining isn't like shaking a tree and have gold nuggets of information you didn't know you had fall out. You have to have some idea of what you're looking for.
Law enforcement would just love to have oodles of data so that they can later rifle through it once they have an idea what they might want to look for, and of course they're the government so they'll just have someone else (pay for) gathering and sitting on all that data "just in case". But that isn't really very nice toward your citizens.
I don't want my movements tracked online or offline just because that's possible. I don't want to be tracked at all, but if law enforcement has a clear reason to suspect me of something then they can have their data, specific only to me, from the point of suspicion onward. Not before. Not "just in case". Only gather with a clear reason to suspect from the point of suspicion. That way you don't need any retention, only gathering evidence.
This is a point where, yes the technology might actually do all that and deliver it with a packet of crisps if you're willing to pay for it, but no, I don't want things to be this way. And thus the choice of "we don't want this" needs to prevail over the mere possiblities the technology offers.
Re:This is about choosing. (Score:4, Insightful)
As always there has to be a balance between privacy and the need to protect people from criminals. The utility of retained data seems to be questionable at best. Often the same information is available from other sources anyway, e.g. the criminal's computer.
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This is not about you choosing your own level of surveillance like keeping your own logfiles, it is about others choosing to surveil you. That might include your logfiles of their activity, of course.
Even more, it is not about those you deal with surveilling you, but those then having to pass all the surveillance information they have (and what they continue to get) about you to third, and even transitively to other fourth and so on, partners.
Telekom Deutschland (and others) are objecting to having to store
Good, although ... (Score:3)
... once again it feels like the CJEU is the last line of defence here, which is not how it should be.
And the court as a whole does not rest on a particularly solid foundation. Unlike the supreme court in the US, the CJEU is a court under international law within the framework of an international treaty. It can issue sanctions, such as fines, but if member states choose to ignore them, then what? That's what we're seeing atm with Poland, whose national legislation was found in breach of EU law. So far, country is simply ignoring the CJEU, citing supremacy of national law.
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Source: https://www.bverwg.de/en/pm/20... [bverwg.de]
What the CJEU comes up with here ought to have some weight in Germany.
I hope that the CJEU shuts this nonsense down for good. But so far the German political conservative parties have been trying to shove this down our throats for decades again and again and again. They'll continue trying.
Re: Good, although ... (Score:2)
Even if it shouldnâ(TM)t have gotten this far, I am glad there is a court that puts citizen rights first.
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And the court as a whole does not rest on a particularly solid foundation. Unlike the supreme court in the US, the CJEU is a court under international law within the framework of an international treaty. It can issue sanctions, such as fines, but if member states choose to ignore them, then what? That's what we're seeing atm with Poland, whose national legislation was found in breach of EU law. So far, country is simply ignoring the CJEU, citing supremacy of national law.
That's the problem with sovereign entities and courts - there is no higher controlling entity than a sovereign state (that's the literal definition of sovereign in this context) so a court can only have what legal power the sovereign entity wishes.
In the case of the current Polish Government, they are just plain wrong. They are (as authoritarians often do) asserting their own idea which is not true. In joining the EU, the Polish government agreed that EU law and directive would be supreme over national law
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Precisely.
What makes the current Polish case so important is that it sets a very dangerous precedent. The consensus by which the EU is formed has worked for a remarkably long time, and pretty well too. Now for the first time a country is breaking that consensus, not in some specific obscure corner case (that has happened before), but in a very broad and fundamental way, by openly declaring that it is ready and willing to explicitly overwrite EU law with national legislation, on very fundamental issues (in
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The EU is a confederation, this kind of thing goes with the territory. This is exactly why the US replaced the articles of confederation with the constitution to form a federation.
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Very much so. The problem is that absolutely nothing happens to the criminally-minded that try to push this through time and again. I would think that attempts to compromise fundamental freedoms assured by EU law should get those doing it at the very least blocked from participating in law-making (and hence political office) for life. I would be in favor for significant prison terms for repeat offenders. But what happens to these proto-fascists? Absolutely nothing. That is not rational and not sustainable.
scary prospect (Score:1)
Does anyone else get skittish when the Germans want to start tracking people better? I seem to recall some bad outcomes from a previous information gathering effort...
_That_ kind of data security they care about (Score:2)
And meanwhile they stuff your car with sensors for driver surveillance:
https://www.euroweeklynews.com... [euroweeklynews.com]
Murder case (Score:2)
https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2021/1118/1261625-eu-court-dwyer/