[PLUTO-soci] [jmaebe a ffii.org: [ffii] EU adopts Big Brother directive, ignores industry and civil society]

[Alberto Cammozzo]

	Approvata dal parlamento EU la direttiva sulla data retention.
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PRESS RELEASE FFII -- [ Europe / ICT / Information Society ]

======================================================================
EU adopts Big Brother directive, ignores industry and civil society
======================================================================

14 December 2005 (Strasbourg, France) The European Parliament today
adopted a directive that will create the largest monitoring database
in the world, tracking all communications within the EU. "From today,
all EU citizens are to be tracked and monitored like common
criminals," says Pieter Hintjens, president of the FFII.

The Data Retention Directive was passed by 378 votes to 197, following
deals between the Council and the leaders of the two largest parties
in Parliament, the EPP-ED (Conservatives) and the PSE (Socialists).
The Rapporteur for the directive, Alexander Alvaro (Liberals) had his
name removed from the report in protest.

Jonas Maebe of the FFII says: "Among other harsh measures, the
directive mandates recording of the source and destination of all
emails you send and every call you make, and your location and
movement during mobile phone calls. Additionally, the directive says
nothing about who has to pay for all this logging, which will
significantly distort the internal telecommunications market."

"Moreover, the directive disregards how Internet protocols work. For
example, tracking Internet telephony calls is generally impossible
without closely watching the content of all data packets. The reason
is that such connections are not necessarily set up via a central
server which can perform the necessary logging. On top of that you
have techniques like tunneling (VPN's) which make it simply impossible
to look at the content", he adds.

The gathered data can be made available without special warrants, and
without limit to certain types of crime. There will be no independent
evaluation, and no extra privacy and no specific security safeguards.
The data will be retained for periods ranging from 6 months up to any
duration a member state can convince the Commission of.

Hartmut Pilch of the FFII says: "This outcome proves that we have to
remain vigilant at all times and work on every relevant directive from
the start. Even now, the planned IPRED2 directive, also unanimously
condemned by industry and civil society, threatens to turn everyone
caught by a patent into a criminal."


======================================================================
Background Information
======================================================================

* Two-page overview of the effects of the most important amendments
  http://www.ffii.org/~jmaebe/dataret/plen1/summary.pdf

* English video stream of today's plenary session
  http://media.vrijschrift.org/ep_vote_datared_051214_en.wmv

* Original language video stream of today's plenary session
  http://media.vrijschrift.org/ep_vote_datared_051214_or.wmv

* Data retention: legislative sausage machine in overdrive
  http://wiki.ffii.org/DataRet0512En

* News, position papers on and analysis of the directive
  http://wiki.dataretentionisnosolution.com

* Permanent link to this press release
  http://wiki.ffii.org/DataRetPr051214En


======================================================================
Contact Information
======================================================================

Erik Josefsson
FFII Brussels Permanent representative
ehj @ ffii.org
+32-484-082063


======================================================================
About the FFII -- http://www.ffii.org
======================================================================

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) is a
non-profit association registered in several European countries, which
is dedicated to the spread of data processing literacy. FFII supports
the development of public information goods based on copyright, free
competition, open standards. More than 850 members, 3,000 companies
and 90,000 supporters have entrusted the FFII to act as their voice in
public policy questions concerning exclusion rights (intellectual
property) in data processing.

_______________________________________________
FFII Press Releases.
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----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Alberto Cammozzo                        V.Cesare Battisti 241/243. PADOVA ITALY
System/Network Manager                  e-mail    : mmzz a stat.unipd.it
Universita` di Padova -IT               tel       : +39 49 8274175