FC: European Parliament votes 351-133 for surveillance; also spam

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Politech archive on data retention:
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=retention

News coverage of the vote:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52882,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/internetnews/story/0,7369,725204,00.html

The official report:
http://www2.europarl.eu.int/omk/OM-Europarl?PROG=PRESS-DAILYNB&L=EN&PUBREF=-//EP//TEXT+PRESS-DAILYNB+DN-20020530-1+0+DOC+SGML+V0//EN&LEVEL=1&REFERER=X&NAV=X#SECTION4

The three documents that Ilka Schroeder mentions in the message below:
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/eu.vote.retention.1.html
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/eu.vote.retention.2.html
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/eu.vote.retention.3.html

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Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 13:27:46 +0200
From: "Ilka   Schroeder" <ischroeder () europarl eu int>
Subject: EU Vote on Data XPXrXoXtXeXcXtXiXoXnX Retention

Dear Friends,

we have prepared a number of docs highlighting a bit the background of 
yesterday's vote on data protection in the EU Parliament. The first is a 
so-called panaché, a non-official version we prepared to see what the 
future directive will look like if approved by the Council. Note that the 
Parliament's additions are in blue, italic and bold, while Parliament's 
deletions are in blue and strikethrough. We have also added the numbers and 
authors of all amendments adopted, just to give you an idea.

The second doc is the outcome of roll calls during that same vote. In fact 
all roll calls were on the retention issue, with the LIBE committee's 
amendments 2 and 20 being against retention, and the PPE-DE / PSE 
amendments 46 and 47  being in favour of it. On 46, we had asked for a 
split vote (an attempt to disperse right-wing votes), with part one being 
everything but the phrase referring to data retention, and part 2 being 
that phrase only. As you all know, they won nevertheless. The Abbreviations 
mean roughly:

PPE-DE Conservatives / Christian Democrats
PSE Social Democrats
ELDR Liberals
Verts/ALE Greens
GUE/NGL Left-Wingers
UEN Right-Wingers
EDD Eurosceptics
NI Independents

OJ Official Journal of the EU, at http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/oj/index.html

The Third doc is the text of Amendments 2 and 20, voted down yesterday but 
included in the roll calls. If you want to know quickly who the bad guys 
are: They are the ones who voted against 20 and / or in favour of 46, part 2.

Take care, and cheers
from Ilka Schroeder's office

Bureau Ilka Schroeder
Parlement européen
Tel: +32 2 284 74 49
GPG Fingerprint: 327F 22F7 6685 20B0 39C7 2762 95C7 A7E8 8B37 3F0A
Come to https://www.ilka.org

---

From: "Caspar Bowden" <cb () fipr org>
Subject: FIPR-Bulletin: Please distribute - petition in protest at data 
retention
Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 12:47:18 +0100

This German website performed the valuable service of collecting 17,000
signatures in just two weeks from all over Europe protesting against
blanket data retention. Although the EP vote is over, you may wish to
redistribute this invitation to join the petition.

(If you would like to redistribute, I think it often works best if you
add a two-line personal comment signalling that you consider the issue
of some importance)

Ample background can be found at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/internetnews/story/0,7369,725204,00.html

http://www.statewatch.org/news/2002/may/10epcavein.htm

Regards
--
Caspar Bowden
Director, Foundation for Information Policy Research
Tel: +44(0)20 7354 2333                 www.fipr.org

...
>***********************************************************************
>ENGLISH VERSION:
>
>The Presumption of Innocence is History.
>
>The European Parliament today passed a law that grants the EU member
>states the rights to unlimited data retention and thus buried
>fundamental rights of EU citizens: freedom of speech, the right to have

>privacy and the presumption of innocence. The Members of the European
>Parliament ignored the expressed denial of more than 16,000 individuals

>to broad data retention as well as the collective statement of more
>than 40 civic organizations, which all signed the open letter of the
>GILC (Global Liberty Internet Campaign) opposing this law.
>
>The stop1984 team is more than disappointed about this decision, which
>is contrary to every EU citizens' interests. The rights of loyal
>citizens were sacrificed on the altar of "war against terrorism". So
>the beneficiaries of the events of 9/11 have finally reached their
>goal: to destroy freedom for the sake of a putative increase in
>security. The fight against terrorism has been used by the MEPs to
>erode fundamental rights in the democratic societies of the European
>Union. We deeply regret this unwise decision.
>
>Stop1984 - and all groups supporting the new open letter - will not be
>inactive when leeway, which can be abused much too easily, is given to
>European countries when it comes to unlimited retention of data.
>
>With our new action (www.stop1984.com/index2.php?text=letter.txt) we
>will address not only to the European Union Parliament but also to all
>governments of Europe and notify them that we're not willing to accept
>derogation of basic rights and will protest against it --- and we ask
>everyone to support our protests by his signature so that the adressees

>will no longer ignore the people´s voice.
>
>-------------------------------------------------------
>
>Cedric Laurant, Policy Fellow
>Electronic Privacy Information Center
>1718 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite 200
>Washington, DC 20009  -  U.S.A.
>Tel: +1 (202) 483-1140 (x114)
>Fax: +1 (202) 483-1248
>www.epic.org  www.privacy.org


---

From: Montse Doval Avendaño <mdoval () labitacora com>
To: <declan () well com>
Subject: European parliament to cave in on data retention?
Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 13:49:04 +0200

Hi Declan,
you may be interested

Statewatch News Online, 28 May 2002
<http://www.statewatch.org/news/index.html>

All articles include background and full-text documentation]

1. EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT TO CAVE IN ON DATA RETENTION?

The PSE/socialist group have joined the EPP/conservative group and accepted
the demands of EU governments and law enforcement agencies to place
communications under surveillance.

Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor, comments:

"The EU governments already have all the powers they need under the
existing Directive to combat terrorism, this measure has nothing to do with
terrorism. The proposal by the EU governments is a cynical exploitation of
public sentiment to introduce draconian powers to potentially place the
whole population of Europe under surveillance.

It took years to agree and put in place the 1997 EU Directive on privacy in
telecommunications in every member state. The right to privacy and freedom
from surveillance once lost will be gone forever.
Montse Doval Avendaño
mdoval () labitacora com
www.labitacora.com
www.desdegalicia.com
God put me on earth to accomplish many things.
Right now I'm so far behind that I may never die.

---

Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 13:16:54 -0500
From: Victoria Clarke <Victoria () Clarkes net>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: EU to Require Opt-In for Commercial Email

Hi Declan,
Thanks for a great list and keeping me informed.

The politech readers may be interested in the following.
I got it from a recent post on SlashDot, 
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/02/05/30/1640210.shtml?tid=111,
and the Parliament's daily notebook has an overview.

Have a good day,
Victoria
--------------------------
Posted by michael on Thursday May 30, @12:41PM from the 
all-things-dull-and-ugly dept.
D4C5CE writes "EuroCAUCE (Usenet message below) and Heise (in German) 
report that the European Parliament has voted to ban spam by adopting the 
"opt-in" system for unsolicited commercial email, finally freeing the way 
for the entry into force of a "European Parliament and Council directive 
concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in 
the electronic communications sector". The news of the parliamentary U-turn 
comes after a recommendation by the "Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and 
Rights, Justice and Home Affairs" to permit "opt-out" marketing had 
received critical coverage, causing countless spam victims world-wide to 
alert the Members of the European Parliament to the big mistake they were 
about to make, and it is hoped to become the useful precedent of a workable 
approach for US lawmakers currently evaluating means to regulate spam as 
well." The Parliament's daily notebook has an overview. Individual EU 
countries still have to implement this with legislation before it is 
effective.

From: Beebit <beebit-u03 () euro cauce org>
Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.email, talk.politics.european-union
Subject: European Parliament Supports 'Opt-In' for Commercial Email
Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 13:08:11 +0200


The European Parliament has decided to accept the Council's Common Position 
which would require senders of advertisements by "electronic mail" to have 
the recipient's prior consent. "Electronic mail" is defined broadly enough 
so as to include text messaging systems based on mobile telephony in 
addition to email.

The 'opt-in' requirement for electronic mail will be in Article 13, 
Paragraph 1 of the new Directive concerning the processing of personal data 
and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector which 
will enter into force following its publication in the Official Journal. 
The Directive will guide the enactment of legislation throughout the 
European Economic Area, which includes the 15 EU Member States and European 
Free Trade Association members Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein. EU 
Members Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, and Italy as well as 
EFTA member Norway had already implemented 'opt-in' in their national 
legislation.

Further provisions in the same Article would allow companies to send 
advertising via email for their own products or services of a similar 
category to addresses which they had obtained in the course of a sale, 
unless and until the customer has registered an objection. Customers are to 
be given the opportunity to object "free of charge and in an easy manner" 
both at the time the contact details are collected and with each 
advertising message.

All in all, is an extremely welcome development, and should serve as an 
example and inspiration for legislators in other territories. We are 
absolutely delighted to see Parliament joining the Commission and the 
Council in taking a stand to protect European consumers and network users. 
It only remains to extend similar protection to corporate citizens. This 
will probably have to be within the framework of other legislation than 
that pertaining to the processing of "personal data".

~~~~
The European Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email is an 
all-volunteer, ad-hoc grouping of Internet users and professionals 
dedicated to bringing about an end to an unethical practice by technical 
and legislative means. http://www.euro.cauce.org/en/

---

From: Montse Doval Avendaño <mdoval () labitacora com>
To: <declan () well com>
Subject: Fw: [MakyPress] 568 - 30/05/2002
Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 21:51:06 +0200
Organization: BCSC

Hi Declan,
I forward to you an e mail from Makypress (a daily newsletter with tech and 
Internet news)
It's about the same law I sent you yesterday in an email.
It might be interesting for Politech readers.
Regards,
Montse

| Subject: URGENT/IMPORTANT- PRESS RELEASE BY MARCO CAPPATO
| Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 14:11:53 +0200
| From: "Marco Cappato" <Mcappato () europarl eu int>
| To: undisclosed-recipients:;

EP/PRIVACY: POPULAR AND SOCIALIST GROUPS DETERMINE EP ENDORSEMENT
OF COUNCIL  REQUESTS FOR DATA RETENTION AUTHORISATION IN EU LAW,
AGAINST CIVIL LIBERTIES  ORGANISATIONS APPEALS - THE FIGHT
AGAINST DATA RETENTION GOES ON AT THE NATIONAL AND EUROPEAN
LEVEL

Brussels, 30 May 2002

Declaration of Marco Cappato, Radical MEP of the Lista Bonino and
EP rapporteur on the directive on privacy in electronic
communications:

"With the vote of today, the directive on privacy in electronic
communications can be correctly defined the directive of data
retention and of iper-regulation of the Internet. The EP first
reading position, as confirmed by the civil liberties committee
in second reading, have been completely reversed in plenary,
convincing me to withdraw my name from the report, as I announced
in plenary after the vote. PPE and PSE have approved  the set of
amendments they had tabled together - with the opposition of the
rapporteur and of my Radical colleagues, the Liberals, the Greens
and the Communists - and that determined the EP surrender to the
Council requests for iper-regulation of the Internet and for data
retention. On this issue, from now on Member states of the EU
have an explicit authorisation in this EU directive to impose on
telecom and Internet service providers the retention and storing
of all citizens' communication datas, such as telephone and
mobile calls, Internet surfing, emails, location datas. The
requests of the almost 17 thousand citizens that had signed a
open letter-appeal on line (http://www.stop1985.com and
http://www.radicalparty.com) to ask to MEPs to vote against the
insertion of this "data retention" provision, have been ignored.
Mme Ana Palacio - Spanish PPE, that worked hard to sponsor the
Spanish Council Presidency requests in the EP, and to have the
committee position she chairs completely reversed in plenary,
furthermore being absent yesterday and today either during EP
debates and votes - and Mme Paciotti - PSE shadow rapporteur,
that did a remarkable U turn on data retention, passing from
opposition to endorsement - took the political responsibility  of
driving their EPP and PSE colleagues for this vote. Belgium,
Holland, Germany, the UK are working on data retention laws that
could make possible the generalised, massive surveillance of the
citizens, and efforts to co-ordinate and establish a Europewide
regime of data retention are taking place in the Council and in
Europol. The fight on the protection of privacy now has to go on
at the national and European level, to protect civil liberties
and foundamental freedoms from measures that with the declared
and apparent aim of fighting against terrorism to protect
democracy, have the effect of damaging it.

---------
You can see who voted how on amendment 20 (Cappato report - LIBE
amendment on deletion of data retention) and on the split vote
asked by Marco Cappato and the GUE, Green and ELDR groups on
Palacio-Paciotti amendment 46, 2nd part (data retention) on the
webpage of the EP:

http://www.europarl.eu.int/direct/application/fr/vote/ResultatsVotes.asp
or
http://www3.europarl.eu.int/omk/omnsapir.so/calendar?APP=PV1&LANGUE=EN

Escrito por ErZoto (para MakyPress)
<mailto:tarifaplana () mienten com>

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