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more on European Commission: data retention voice: 1 year and Internet 6 months
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2005 17:57:26 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Laurent GUERBY <laurent () guerby net> Date: September 25, 2005 4:39:17 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Cc: Ip Ip <ip () v2 listbox com>Subject: Re: [IP] more on European Commission: data retention voice: 1 year and Internet 6 months
From: DV Henkel-Wallace <gumby () henkel-wallace org> Date: September 22, 2005 12:27:11 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] European Commission: data retention voice: 1 year and Internet 6 months [...]
This EC directive was discussed on various lists, while I did not look into the details of connection retention and ISP costs I suggested that the economic equation could be very different for phone calls than for internet "connections": phone calls are manual and somewhat expensive, internet "connections" (ICMP, TCP, UDP) are very easy to automate and mostly free. Creative citizens opposing the proposed system could easily jam the system (remember M-x spook :) by writing and using software that automatically connects to millions of different randomized peers, making logs expensive to collect for ISP and mostly useless to authorities if too many citizens decide to use them (in the end it's just a slight variation on network scanning tools or of current P2P protocols).
I find this development fascinating. When I lived in France I was initially annoyed that I could not get an itemised telephone bill although I was ultimately able to pay extra to get all but the last four digits. The explanation I was given (independently by several technically-savvy people, not by France Telecom) was that the phone company was _forbidden_ from storing this info once the connection was made and billing record generated because such info had been misused in the '30s and '40s for, umm, political ends.
Looks like wrong to me, AFAIK french justice has always had access to full phone call records (number dialed, hour and duration) for some duration, and France Telecom had to keep them for some fixed time (and no more, see below).
Interesting if this concern is now being casually swept away.
French law created the CNIL <http://www.cnil.fr/> and a set of laws to protect privacy of its citizens from both government and business in 1978. CNIL did a (I'd say very) good job for a while, but current government passed laws and named someone at the head of CNIL with the clear intent to destroy its usefullness to citizens completely: let business do whatever they want with their customer data and government fight "terrorism", and they of course succeeded. These things unfortunately work the same way on both side of the atlantic, building good administrative infrastructure is a long and hard process, destroying it takes a few years at best. Laurent ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- more on European Commission: data retention voice: 1 year and Internet 6 months David Farber (Sep 25)