State Snoopers - Data Retention Revived in UK (on the orders of the EU)

The previous government's Intercept Modernisation Programme has been revived by the new Coalition. This is,in plain language, the reintroduction of a plan to spy on all our telephone calls and internet activity - although, at the moment, that spying does not cover the actual content of communications.

This moves clearly contradicts claims by both Coalition partners that they would cut back on Labour's surveillance state.

Why, then, are they reviving this programme?

Simple.

They have no choice. This is an EU requirement. Directive 2006/24/EC. Not that you'll get the British media mentioning the fact.

What's worse is this: Clarke warns on phone terror plan. That's the jug-eared Labout twat, not the cigar-smoking twat now back in office.

Labour were very keen to push this programme through the EU. For which they ought to be strung up.

Pity they didn't ask us about it.

Pity the UK media couldn't be bothered to tell us about it either. One thing you can be certain about - neither the politicians nor the useless twats in the media are going to admit the truth.

The Germans Are Getting Restless

German court overturns law on phone, e-mail data - Yahoo! News

BERLIN – Germany's highest court on Tuesday overturned a law that let anti-terror authorities retain data on telephone calls and e-mails, saying it posed a "grave intrusion" to personal privacy rights and must be revised.

The court ruling was the latest to sharply criticize a major initiative by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government and one of the strongest steps yet defending citizen rights from post-Sept. 11 terror-fighting measures.

The ruling comes amid a European-wide attempt to set limits on the digital sphere, that includes disputes with Google Inc. over photographing citizens for its Street View maps.

The Karlsruhe-based Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the law violated Germans' constitutional right to private correspondence and failed to balance privacy rights against the need to provide security. It did not, however, rule out data retention in principle.

The law had ordered that all data — except content — from phone calls and e-mail exchanges be retained for six months for possible use by criminal authorities, who could probe who contacted whom, from where and for how long.

"The disputed instructions neither provided a sufficient level of data security, nor sufficiently limited the possible uses of the data," the court said, adding that "such retention represents an especially grave intrusion."

The court said because citizens did not notice the data was being retained it caused "a vague and threatening sense of being watched."

Nearly 35,000 Germans had appealed to the court to overturn the law, which stems from a 2006 European Union anti-terrorism directive requiring telecommunications companies to retain phone data and Internet logs for a minimum of six months in case they are needed for criminal investigations.

Civil rights groups had fiercely opposed the law, arguing that even excluding the content of phone calls and e-mails could allow authorities too deep a view into their personal sphere.

"Massive amounts of data about German citizens who pose no threat and are not suspects is being retained," Germany's commissioner for data security issues, Peter Schaar, told ARD television.

Security experts argued the information is crucial to being able to trace crimes involving heavy use of the Internet, including tracking terror networks and child pornography rings.

While the court upheld the EU directive as necessary to fight terror, it took issue with how the German law had interpreted it and ordered further restrictions on access to the data.

Changes ordered by the court included granting access to the data only by court order and only in the event of "concrete and imminent danger." The court further insisted the information be stored in the private sector so it was not concentrated in one spot.

Germans, in particular, are sensitive to privacy issues, based on their experiences under the Nazis as well as the former East Germany's Communist dictatorships, where information on individuals was collected and abused by the state.

Can't see our courts taking that much interest in our rights, can you?

Ministers cancel 'Big Brother' database NOT

The Independent proves that it's staffed by idiots.

The headline and attendant article give the misleading impression that plans for surveillance of all our phone and internet activity have been abandoned.

As any fule kno, all that's been 'cancelled' is the government's plans for its own central database to store (and lose) the data gathered by the ISPs in accordance with EU law. The collection and retention of the data is still going ahead.

Give me strength.

You Can't Trust The Fucking Swedes Either

As if having the Franco-German axis throwing its weight around in the EU Empire weren't enough, the Swedes have decided they want part of the action as well.

Hence The Stockholm Programme:

The Stockholm Programme is to define the framework for EU police and customs cooperation, rescue services, criminal and civil law cooperation, asylum, migration and visa policy for the period 2010–2014. The Programme was discussed at the informal ministerial meeting in Stockholm in July 2009 and will ultimately be adopted by EU Heads of State and Government at the Summit in December 2009.

In a preamble document there's the statement:

Migration issues are also high on the list of priorities. The EU must attract more immigrant labour so that bottlenecks in the labour market can be eliminated and more people can find work.

You may wish to issue a loud "what the fuck?", just as I did. In other words, under Lisbon there'll be a common rule preventing individual members from regulating immigration into their own states from outside the EU.

It's also ironic that this is all towards making "an open and more secure Europe" while they're talking about increasing surveillance, for instance.

They're also mightily obsessed with people-trafficking, this being one of the current fashionable hobby-horses of interfering neo-liberal progressive types.

I've gone right off the Swedes.

On a more optimistic note: the Romanian courts are rejecting the EU's data retention directive:

Members of EDRi, European Digital Rights, and the press are reporting that Romania’s constitutional courts are blocking Data Retention. Their decision could lead to restoration of privacy rights in the UK and across Europe.

The Romanian courts have concluded that retention of data identifying who individuals send email communications to is a breach of their fundamental right to secrecy of correspondence.

Europeans and UK citizens have this right enshrined in Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

As Romania is a member of the EU, this may mean they have to challenge the Directive through the EU court system, if they wish to defend their court's decision, and if they succeed, the Directive itself would have to be revised or repealed. It is by now law in nearly all EU states, with the notable exception of Sweden. German citizens are also trying to challenge its constitutionality on privacy grounds.

The Directive was challenged by Ireland on a narrower basis, but the door was left open for a human rights challenge. ORG and over forty other civil liberties groups made this case in a joint submission at the time.

Update: campaigners are waiting to see exactly what the judgement says, but warn that Romania may not take a challenge to the EU, but may simply not implement the directive.

Small country. Let's see if they get the usual EU bullying treatment.

Anyway, fuck the Swedes and hurrah for the Romanians.

Data Surveillance Legislation UK

Following the last post and comment re: Right To Reply, here are basic details of the legislation:

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA); the British government paves the way for total communications surveillance. Comment and explanation from the Guardian. The Act is currently being reviewed in the light of concerns that local authorities have been using its powers for inappropriate purposes.

Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC from the EU laying down requirements for all ISPs and telephone companies to log and store personal data. Apparently the British government lobbied hard for this legislation.

Transposition of part of above Directive into UK law by Statutory Instrument, 2007 (the part covering telephone companies – the remainder, covering ISPs to be implemented in 2009). Further comment. The relevant Statutory Instrument.

Transposition of remaining part of above Directive concerning ISPs into UK law, 2009 (the part covering ISPs and all internet activity). Further comment. Schedule to relevant Statutory Instrument.

The Intercept Modernisation Programme, ie the government's own plan to create a central database of all recorded phone and internet data.

The government appears to drop plans for a centralised database, April 2009.

Any broken, incorrect links, please let me know. And any more direct links to the legislation.

British Crap Media Data Face Punch Modernisation

If there's one thing that's invariable about the British media it's that they're shit at their job. Which is why I have to keep repeating myself.

Read this:

Communications firms are being asked to record all internet contacts between people as part of a modernisation in UK police surveillance tactics.

The home secretary scrapped plans for a database but wants details to be held and organised for security services.

The new system would track all e-mails, phone calls and internet use, including visits to social network sites.

The Tories said the Home Office had "buckled under Conservative pressure" in deciding against a giant database.

Announcing a consultation on a new strategy for communications data and its use in law enforcement, Jacqui Smith said there would be no single government-run database.

"Communications data is an essential tool for law enforcement agencies to track murderers and paedophiles, save lives and tackle crime." Jacqui Smith, Home Secretary

But she also said that "doing nothing" in the face of a communications revolution was not an option.

The Home Office will instead ask communications companies - from internet service providers to mobile phone networks - to extend the range of information they currently hold on their subscribers and organise it so that it can be better used by the police, MI5 and other public bodies investigating crime and terrorism.

That's from the BBC.

Firstly, this makes it appear that the government has chosen getting ISPs to hold personal data as an alternative option to its proposed central database and that the whole project is simply a government policing initiative.

Secondly, it ignores the fact that the government has already instituted legislation requiring ISPs to store this data.

Thirdly, it ignores the fact that the government instituted the legislation in order to comply with the EU's directive on data retention (Directive 2006/24/EC).

Abd fourthly, the press (unless I am getting as stupid as them) are conflating and confusing existing EU legislation with the government's own extension of these requirements (the Intercept Modernisation Programme), and falling for government spin.

The government has been keeping very quiet about all of this and the media, unfortunately, have aided it by being useless at reporting things properly (or even reporting it at all).

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?