EU adopts data retention

Posted Dec 15, 2005 2:13 UTC (Thu) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link]

Unfortunately, it's mainly our infernal govenrment that is causing much of this. To some extent, Europe protected us from the SWPat directive - but this data retention has been at least partly driven by the UK.

Our state is corrupt: many of the things that should be illegal (Data Retention, Detention without charge/trial,CCTV,ID cards, biometrics) are being actively encouraged by the government.

Now, since we have this legislation, what are we going to do that screws it up? We (the techies) still run the Internet - so how do we build anonymisation and encryption into everything. Preferably by default.

Posted Dec 15, 2005 6:57 UTC (Thu) by csamuel (subscriber, #2624) [Link]

Sadly the UK is already way ahead of Europe on this. If you'd read the FFII summary PDF you'd have seen:

In the UK traffic data can already be accessed in any investigation, and authorised by a variety of public agencies beyond policing.

Posted Dec 16, 2005 14:57 UTC (Fri) by jcm (subscriber, #18262) [Link]

Europe isn't the problem, in fact it's one of the solutions. Working together helps to reduce British xenophobia which still seems to pervade our society. Britain today is "moderately conservative" (read: the Republicans would probably get elected - especially with a bit of use of the T word).

Europe needs to overcome the need to regulate everything, this is what alienates people. They have mandates on the legal allowed height for rocking horses and a few million other directives which give the wrong impression. The Euro hasn't been implemented so well and there are other EU issues - but just think about it, isn't it cool that 25 member states with so much diverse history and culture can work together? We've half the member states of the US but many more issues to work out.

The main problem which affects the UK today is her Majesty's Government. They are the ones we should be taking aim at as well as the ones we should have thrown out of office for a continual errosion of our rights. At least the USians have a bill of rights, we just have a few hundred years of piecemeal bills and an apparent willingness to opt out of European Human Rights legislation on a whim - witness the comments of the (thankfully) former Home Secretary.

Jon.