Data Retention a.k.a. "hey, that book, 1984? Great idea!"

international | eu | other press Monday December 12, 2005 02:17 by A. Programmer

Members of the European Parliament will vote on whether to mandate retention of ALL email and mobile and landline phone call records across europe for 12 months. To fight "The Terrorists", but of course...

No, this is not a joke. Powerful forces in Ireland and Europe are working to establish a police state for the information age, and they are trying to push the legislation through right now - while no-one's watching, it being the holiday season and all: It's too late to write to your MEP about it: phone, fax or email. "Damn Euros" you're saying, right? Well, guess what, local boy McDowell thought it just wasn't fascist enough, and fought for Ireland's "right" to have its own 3 YEAR retention of all records! Quite apart from the sheer technical insanity of retaining that much data, this is also a good example of the practice "policy laundering" - such proposals were already (IMO quite rightly) squashed in some european states, but national governments want to be able to say "well, we know it's infringing civil liberty, but those gosh darn europeans made us do it".