Civil liberties groups challenge Data Retention Directive in ECJ

European civil liberties groups have lodged an objection to the EU's Data Retention Directive with the European Court of Justice, claiming that the Directive breaches a fundamental right to privacy guaranteed in the European Convention on Human Rights. UK groups the Open Rights Group (ORG), Statewatch and Privacy International …

[Anonymous Coward]

Blair's gone so should his laws

Recall that this preemptive monitoring of everyone in advance of a warrant or probable cause was a Blair demand. He basically argued that it was how they caught the other suspected bomber in Italy (from his phone logs).

http://rfe.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/08/aec5d068-be7a-42fb-85af-842263639703.html

He had special leverage because of this claim. However this was not quite true, they caught him from his *current* phone position *after* a warrant had been issued. So his demand did not represent the full truth.

Blair also argued that it was already recorded information, and so it was not *more* invasive to insist it was recorded. But this is a nonsensical argument, if it was already done then the law was not needed. It was also untrue, the extra information stored was the location data (the signal strength) and sim card to phone data. It added location tracking to everyone's data trail. So any little sh*t like me in telecoms can pull up details of where you've been, who you called, who was also there at the same location, which phones you've used. Previously I could not do this.

Currently the UK police are equating having multiple SIM cards with being a terrorist, so they've totally lost reality at this point. The SIM to PHONE ID match gives them a database to mine for their paranoid nonsense which otherwise wouldn't exist.

http://www.met.police.uk/campaigns/campaign_ct_2008.htm

Remember that creepiness in one EU country results in entries in the police information database which is shared with other police forces and cannot be viewed or challenged by the person affected. Dysfunctional enforcement policy spreads like a disease unless checked. It will not be confined to the UK.

The thing is, we have our privacy law, and that protects Europeans from overzealous enforcement, then we have the UK which is creepyville CCTV land. Does Europe want to become like the UK or do we enforce our privacy law.

Do we accept mass surveillance sans warrant or cause? Is Blair still in government? If his arguments stood the test of the UK, why was he forced out of power? The privacy right has been there for decades in it's current form and even centuries in other forms. Blair is gone.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know what you did last summer

Perhaps I can put in perspective the extra data that was recorded by this directive.

You are a judge or a politician, I am a telecoms engineer with access to the database recorded for this law. I can monitor you from my desk.

I know where you work because it's public record. So I can find what your mobile is, because I can match your phone to your location and eliminate over time other phones that happen to be there on a particular day.

From this I can find where you live, because at some point you will be there with your phone switch on, and I can tell you live there because it will be a residential location you regularly visit.

I can then tell your children and wifes phones, from their co-location to yours. I can see where your children go to school,

I can see who you meet with, by their colocation to you in meeting locations. I can see their families too.

I said I can monitor you from my desk, but actually it's historical info, it would be easier for me to run a program mine the data and extract this info from historical records.

I can do this retrospectively, all the information on you is recorded when you are not under suspicion.

I can do this speculatively, I can hook up a computer to search for 'suspicious' patterns, by suspicious, I mean an algorithm I invent and code, since I am the engineers who writes the code that defines who is suspicious or not.

So far I've only mined the GSM location data in this scenario. I haven't even begun to cross link it to other databases or used the other extra data that was recorded as a result of this directive.

[Spleen]

Re: 10:40

Feel free. I have nothing to hide so I have nothing to fear!

(because I am a Daily Mail reader with a vacuous sucking void where my soul and mind should be and my only activity of any interest to the world is my occasional wife-beating)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Spleen

"Feel free. I have nothing to hide so I have nothing to fear!"

Don't worry about the wife beating, she's cheating on you anyway, you know she tells you she's going to the gym? Well that's not where her phone location record says she is in the afternoons.... Don't worry though, her WWW record says she's getting found a secret abortion clinic, she called their appointments number yesterday. :-) BTW your teen daughter is hot, and those photos see sends by MMS, wow!

Seriously, I bet Blair has that exemption that 'celebs' have that lets them protect their car registration details from curious people. He certainly has a concealed back entrance into his new house. They all understand the principle of privacy, but somehow can only see how it should apply to *them* and not *everyone*.

[Niall]

Ireland seriously?

We already have data retention laws, 3 years for phone data 2 years for the rest. This goes over the max stated by the EU.

I no longer have to keep a diary, the Govt. does it for me.

[RW]

Tony Blair

A legend in his own mind, and unhesitating in letting the world know this. And *seriously* disconnected from reality.

If I were Pope, I'd have rejected his application as "not suitable".