Tuesday 10 February 2009

Spying On Us Is OK Says ECJ

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled in favour of the EU's data retention directive (2006/24/EC) and against an appeal by the Irish government - on the grounds that it '"ensures that the obligations and costs imposed on telecoms companies are the same throughout the EU, thereby allowing for the “functioning of the internal market”.'

That's funny, considering the directive is supposedly about crime and terrorism. I fail to see how this has anything to do with regulating the internal market.

The directive, which will be implemented in the UK as the Intercept Modernisation Programme compels ISPs to log the details of all our phone and internet activity on behalf of our government (ie the EU). Ireland argue that this sort of legislation should have been decided by national governments. It is already in operation in most member states. The UK government originally estimated it would cost ISPs £25 million to comply. Guess who's going to be paying that bill?

2 comments:

Watching Them, Watching Us said...


The directive, which will be implemented in the UK as the Intercept Modernisation Programme compels ISPs to log the details of all our phone and internet activity on behalf of our government (i.e. the EU).


This has already been implemented, and has already come fully into force in the UK:

See The Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009 come into force on 6th April 2009

The Interception Modernisation Programme is a vague plan by only the UK Government, for even more data retention and snooping on top of that which has been inflicted on 450 million innocent European Union citizens.

"Ireland argue that this sort of legislation should have been decided by national governments"


The Irish Government's court case is not quite the fight for freedom from EU bureaucracy that you imply. They actually want to retain all the Communications Data for at least three years, instead of "only" the one year, as per the EU directive.

Chief of the Inner Station said...

Thanks.

They're all bastards.