Data Retention Directive Passed
December 15th, 2005
Yesterday morning (14th December 2005) the European Parliament passed a Directive mandating member states to introduce surveillance of all European citizens in their daily lives.
Digital Rights Ireland deplores the decision of the large parties in the European Parliament to collude with the Council of Ministers in this back-room deal, by-passing the compromise proposal proposed by the Parliament Rapporteur from the Committee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, Mr. Alexander Alvaro.
The Directive mandates that EU member states, including Ireland, are to track the location of all mobile phones, all calls made from land lines and mobile phones, as well as all information on individuals’ internet and email usage. This will include keeping records of all web sites visited, the senders and recipients of all emails and the use of any other Internet Protocol (IP) based communication such as the increasingly popular Voice over IP (VoIP) phone providers such as Skype.
Digital Rights Ireland chairman, TJ McIntyre responded “We will be campaigning for a full and public consultation process before the Irish implementing legislation is drafted. So far, data retention measures have been negotiated behind closed doors, with a haste justified by artificial urgency. The citizens of this country deserve an open and inclusive debate before any further freedoms are taken away.”
Privacy Under Attack
Ireland has already had surveillance of this kind for some years. The existing rules required details of telephone use and mobile phone location to be stored for three years. This was initially introduced in secret in 2002, and was placed on a statutory basis only this year, by way of a last-minute amendment to pending legislation. This amendment was introduced without prior warning or consultation, and rushed through with little debate.
However, this European law goes further. It extends monitoring to cover all internet use. It will require Internet service providers to record details of every email you send and every web page you visit. The Directive requires this information to be kept for a minimum of 6 months, but allows national governments to adopt longer periods if they wish. The Irish Government already requires your telephone records to be held for 3 years and seems set to apply the same to these new areas.
In addition, this law, since it was adopted in Europe, is immune from challenge under our Constitution. No Irish judge will be able to decide whether this law amounts to a breach of the constitutional right to privacy. Digital Rights Ireland is concerned that our Constitutional rights can be evaded so easily.
A Rushed Job
This directive was the fastest ever to be adopted by the European Parliament – moving from initial European Commission draft to final vote in less than three months, as opposed to the usual period of over a year. The rush was attributable to the UK Presidency’s need to have the matter dealt with during their term of office.
Gay Mitchell MEP, who broke with Fine Gael’s grouping (the European People’s Party) to vote against the law said, “I do not know why this proposal was rushed. The extremely accelerated legislation procedure has meant that there was little time for discussion, and translations were sometimes unavailable. There was also no time for a technology assessment or for a study on the impact on the internal market.”
Internet business groups have decried the Parliament’s decision. The umbrella group for European Telco and ISP industry associations warned “This directive will impose a significant burden on European e-communications industry, impacting on its competitiveness. However, only a fraction of the e-mail services used today would be covered by the EU Directive as the world’s largest e-mail providers are not in Europe, allowing criminals to easily circumvent the rules.”
Michele Neylon, of Carlow-based Blacknight Hosting echoed this warning “Although, as a responsible company, we can appreciate the spirit of the legislation, I feel that this legislation’s introduction will have a negative impact on industry, while it will fail to address its own objectives.”
“It is disappointing that the European Parliament has seen fit to support such a draconian and disproportionate directive. Those MEPs who voted in favour of data retention have shown an alarming disregard for Europeans’ civil liberties and human rights. We will now be looking at what can be done both in the European Court of Human Rights, and on a national level, to overturn – or at least limit – this legislation.”- Suw Charman, Open Rights Group (UK)
Gus Hosein, Visiting Fellow of the LSE and Senior Fellow of UK-based watchdog Privacy International said “The EU used to set the standard for privacy protection. Now because of pressure from the UK and Ireland, the EU is ‘going it alone’ and leading the world in surveillance of all of our interactions and movements in the information society.”
Ireland’s Response
The Irish Minister for Justice, Mr. Michael McDowell, who was one of the promoters of Data Retention in the Council of Ministers, has now threatened to take a legal challenge to this directive to the European Court of Justice. This is the result of an argument over whether the European Commission and Parliament should have had any role in determining what Mr. McDowell argues was a matter solely for the governments. Digital Rights Ireland would welcome this development, and calls on the Minister not to pull back from his stated position, which is also supported by the government of Slovakia.
Digital Rights Ireland, along with other European rights groups and industry representatives, have argued that data retention is a disproportionate invasion of everyone’s privacy. It treats everyone using a telephone or the Internet as a suspect, putting every man, woman and child in Europe under surveillance. Data preservation, which rights groups prefer, would target only those actually suspected of being engaged in criminal activities, and would implement adequate safeguards such as court orders and warrants
Following the formality of Council of Ministers’ approval for this law, Ireland will have 18 months in which to draft national legislation to implement its terms, pending the outcome of the Minister for Justice’s mooted challenge to the validity of this directive.
As befits the public significance of this kind of legislation, Digital Rights Ireland will vigorously seek to assist policy makers in drafting proportionate and secure national laws.
We will also be campaigning for adequate safeguards to be put in place before this new law is implemented. These must include minimising the time for which your information is stored, limiting the circumstances in which your information can be accessed, providing for adequate oversight of the data retention system, and requiring independent approval before your personal information can be accessed. Without these safeguards, details of your phone calls, your internet use, and even your whereabouts will be wide open to abuse.
Entry Filed under: DRI, Data Retention, Press
16 Comments Add your own
1. Tuppenceworth.ie blog &ra&hellip | December 16th, 2005 at 12:19 pm
[...] It leads with a spokesman for the minister for justice saying that he intends to fight this law hard, and then carries on with paragraphs of helpful quotes from Digital Rights Ireland Chairman, TJ McIntyre. [...]
2. Gavin | December 19th, 2005 at 12:21 pm
Perhaps there should be investigation into standards for the storing of this data as well. We need to know exactly what sort of data will be stored, how it will be stored and how it will be accessed. Will packet timing be stored, packet size etc. Are there crypto techniques than can be used to enforce restricted access to data, required authorisation from independant third parties ?
If this can’t be stopped, it may be possible to ensure that data is not accessed in a wholesale manner as appears to be the case in the U.S. as the moment.
3. simon | December 20th, 2005 at 8:36 pm
I emailed my MEPs and Brian Crowley replied.
Dear Simon
Thank you for your email regarding the voting on the ALVARO Report on Data Retention.
As you may be aware the two largest political groups in the Parliament, the EPP and PSE, agreed a deal on a compromise package of amendments which forced the Rapporteur, Mr Alvaro to withdraw his name from the report.
The main points with regard to the amendments which were adopted relate to the type of data to be retained and this will not include the content of the data, also that the data will only be provided to competent national authorities as laid down by national legislation, and the crimes for which data is to be sought must be defined by member states in their national legislation also.
Yours is one of the many letters I have received on this matter and I should point out that the law at present on Data Retention in Ireland is not affected or impacted by this legislation.
You may also know that my colleagues and I abstained on the final vote as we believe that the issue should have been dealt with on the third pillar and not the first pillar which is also the position of the Irish government, however, this was a minority viewpoint.
Regarding your second point, there has been no case taken to the European Court of Human Rights regarding this directive, and indeed the Irish legislation which was passed this year wasn’t challenged in the Irish Courts either on the question of contravention of human rights.
Thank you for taking the time to write to me.
4. Stephen | January 6th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
I’ve posted this elsewhere and I hope you won’t think me tiresome for posting it again here, but not everyone seems to be aware that crime isn’t the only thing that privacy invasion of this kind can detect.
Common sense has once again proved inadequate to dissuade the stealthdictators; that we can roll back another year on our calendars as our leaders drag us into a state of Orwellian Believe-It-Or-Not. Fascism: amazingly, piece-by-piece, item-by-item, governments can justify the details without ever once admitting what they all add up to.
This message, this opinion, this personal and of-the-moment view, or another like it, might find itself logged and stored somewhere and one day, I’ll do something innocently illegal – overdue tax on the car, parking fine, whatever – and they’ll look at my record and find this cross-referenced to all the innocent wrongs I’ve done and they’ll say, “Does that sound like a dissident to you?” They’ll say, “Let’s keep an eye on him for a while,” or “let’s watch who he talks to,” or “his wife” or “his children”. And one day, if it isn’t me, then someone I know will be arrested because of my automotive innocence, or pilloried by their neighbours or in the press for their newly-revealed and embarrassing proclivities. Will they deserve their treatment? Ask the woman who covets her neighbour’s wife; the man with the whips under his bed (bought on e-Bay) that he never had the courage to try out; the Al Qaida sympathiser who never lifted a hand or finger against another human being, but talked too loudly too often and was interned for expressing his right to free speech. Ask Salman Rushdie or Nelson Mandela who also spoke freely and were imprisoned each by a different differing form of alternative culture. Ask your sweet young sweet-stealing self or your ten-biros-a-week-from-the-office sister or your brother with the disease that needs treatment, not incarceration; your cousin who found a dubious way to pay the rent; your parents who struck you once while you were growing up and regretted it forever thereafter.
Privacy is a human need. We aren’t all planning crimes or acts of atrocity and those of us who are, who know, who have been forewarned, that their every word is being monitored, they won’t be caught by tapping their phones and reading their e-mails (anyone ever hear of this thing they’ve got called ‘code’?). Privacy is where we maintain our sanity, sharing our shames with people we honour; exercising our wildest, most villainous thoughts in print or by vicarious absorption of books, films and TV shows; it’s where we fantasise because we’re grown-up enough to know that acting out our fantasies would be wrong, wrong, shameful and wrong.
We need privacy, not to keep our secrets in, but to nourish our individuality.
You want to read my mind? Shun me now. You aren’t going to like what you see. What I did, thought or said as a child that I don’t do, think or condone now; acts that have shamed me and shame me still; unworthy practices of today that I may yet have time to grow out of, not illegal things, but my personal, imperfect things which may become horrid future regrets. I hate to end this with a quote by the artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, Prince, but “…then, give me the electric chair for all my future crimes.”
“Yeah”
(from Batman)
Heroism is private, too, by the way…
5. John McCormac | January 13th, 2006 at 6:30 am
Does the legislation specifically mention the monitoring of web use and the retention of web traffic data?
The legislation (at a glance) seems to specify connection data and phone traffic data but not specifically web traffic data.
6. Tuppenceworth.ie blog &ra&hellip | January 16th, 2006 at 8:55 pm
[...] But if I were a Green Party voter, or potential voter, I would like to hear more about such mundane matters as the CPI controversy, the introduction of mandatory phone and internet monitoring, the recently announced plans to bring in Automatic Number Plate Recognition CCTV and the announced summit on the introduction of ID cards and their accompanying databases to Ireland for the UK’s administrative convenience. All these things have been making the news since December 2005 and all of them are in his baliwick. [...]
7. Digital Rights Ireland &r&hellip | April 11th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
[...] At the launch of the Data Protection Commissioner’s 2005 Annual Report today Mr. Billy Hawkes, the Commissioner, strongly criticised the current Data Protection laws and suggested in his report that the implementation of the European Data Retention Directive into Irish law ought to be used by the government as an opportunity to revisit some of the provisions passed last year. [...]
8. County Criminal Justice C&hellip | September 16th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
County Criminal Justice Center…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…
9. Digital Rights Ireland &r&hellip | November 21st, 2007 at 2:58 pm
[...] How long will it be before the giant databases created by data retention laws are compromised? Governments worldwide, and the Irish Government in particular, have shown that they cannot be trusted with the information they already have. Now is not the time to create even more databases. [...]
10. Gearld | December 16th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Does anyone know how long eircom keep their IP logs? There doesnt seem to be anything on their website. From reading the article above under the ‘Data Retention Directive’ it must be for a minimun of 6 months – as with all ISP’s. But I also see that Ireland has 18 months (from Dec ‘06) to comply with this directive. So not sure what the current status is.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
11. Shauna D Westwood | January 19th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
I totally disagree with this directive. It is an invasion of our privacy as Irish citizens. This directive should not be initiated at all. It is enough to lose our privacy over our mobile phones. That was uncalled for, as is this directive. Whether to monitor European citizens to prevent crime in a “Minority Report”/futuristic-type way is totally unneccessary and I won’t stand for it. I’m not a criminal and deserve respect and privacy, which I should enjoy without even having to think about it. I do not support this ridiculous notion. I do not agree with this website even asking me for my details here and I should be able to make an anonymous comment.
12. Phil Challis | February 23rd, 2010 at 11:59 am
I believe that the whole system is completely upside down. There are some plus points to CCTV but on the whole I do think that the Gov’t is stealthly bringing in new methods to catch people out and thereby raise much needed revenue. Number plate recognition is already functioning to catch the motorist who has missed paying his road fund tax. Let us face up to the fact that we are here for the MP’s and not as it is supposed to be. The latest expenses issue brought this out together with MP’s view that they are beyond reproach and protected under antiquated laws.
We need to cull the number of MP’s – after all we are now run by Brussells so where is the need for this second very expensive tier of wastefull expense.
TV HDREADY
13. Phil Challis | February 23rd, 2010 at 12:09 pm
The problem is that the Gov’s is not there to serve us but totally the reverse. The expenses scandal brought this out coupled with MP’s immunity from prosecution. CCTV is a tool of the government to raise very necessary revenue. On the basis we are now ruled by Brussells – why do we need so many MP’s – is this not an area where we could make some huge savings by having a cull.
Number plate recognition is just another tool to collect road fund tax and nothing else.
The whole system needs overhauling as it clearly does not work.
TV HDREADY
14. Report Tax Evasion | March 8th, 2010 at 10:16 am
Good article,picture gallery is very informative,give more detail about the story. Thanks for this super blog.WOW that is cool that his parents just let his daughter have all that money. Its a shame we lost such and amazing actor.
15. landlord web » rent&hellip | June 14th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
[...] 4.Digital Rights Ireland » Data Retention Directive Passed Digital Rights Ireland deplores the decision of the large parties in the European Parliament to collude with the Council of Ministers in this back-room deal, by-passing the compromise proposal proposed by the Parliament Rapporteur from the Committee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, Mr. Alexander Alvaro. [...]
16. landlord web » 15 c&hellip | June 14th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
[...] 3.Digital Rights Ireland » Data Retention Directive Passed Digital Rights Ireland deplores the decision of the large parties in the European Parliament to collude with the Council of Ministers in this back-room deal, … Common sense has once again proved inadequate to dissuade the stealthdictators; that we can roll back another year on our calendars as our leaders drag us into a… [...]
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