more on European Commission: data retention voice: 1 year and Internet 6 months

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

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




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