Rob's Blog

…Not a new medical condition, but another in a long line of invasive ideas cooked up by authoritarians. Suw Charman has an article describing it in depth:

The UK, France, Ireland and Sweden are trying to push a directive on data retention through into EU legislation which would force all member countries to compel all telecommunications and internet service providers to save information about the use of their services by us, the public (document 8958/2004). They say that this is for ‘the purpose of prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of crime and criminal offences including terrorism’, but whilst it would have far-reaching consequences, the benefits appear to be non-existent.

The data they want to retain includes web sites visited, addressees of emails and the mast your mobile phone is talking to (meaning that your approximate location would be recorded as long as your phone is switched on).

If that doesn’t immediately send chills down your spine, then it should. In short, the government will be keeping track of all your conversations and communications, and the cost of that spying is going to show up on your phone bill. But worse will be the damage to your civil and human rights. The lack of any meaningful checks and balances in the system means that there’s a high risk of abuse not just from the government, but potentially from the private sector too. And the benefits from all this will be negligible at best, illusory at worst.

Suw goes on to explain who wants the data (everyone including the Postal Services Commission); what it will cost; how useful it will (or rather won’t) be for law enforcement; why the directive might be illegal; why you should care (item 6 is poignant); and what you can do about it.

It’s all too familiar — so many of the arguments for and against ID cards are the same — and I’m sure we can expect a lot more of this type of thing. Suw writes, “precedents will have been set and future amendments or new directives will only become more and more draconian”. We are already a long way down that road.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 22nd, 2005 at 7:02 pm and is filed under Civil Liberties, Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.