p2p news / p2pnet: The spurious "fight against terror" originally dreamed up by the US Cheney/Bush administration was the excuse used by the world’s largest corporations to move to have European phone calls, email and Net use logged and stored.

"The legislation, written in September, is coming up for a vote in record time," says the New York Times. "Though it generally takes a year to 18 months to bring a law to a vote, the countries that make up the union back the legislation, which comes in the wake of terrorist attacks in London last summer and Madrid last year."

And the European parliament is expected to approve it, says the story, going on that the speed, however, alarms telecommunications companies, which say the public hasn’t had enough time to consider the implications.

The version the EU parliament will vote on tomorrow, written by Britain, would require phone companies to keep information like the time of phone calls or fax transmissions, the phone numbers of incoming and outgoing calls and the duration of the calls for at least two years, says the NYT. Details of e-mail activity would have to be stored for a minimum of six months.

"The newly-formed Creative and Media Business Alliance (CMBA), made up of companies such as Sony BMG, Disney, EMI, IFPI, MPA and Universal Music International, this week expressed an interest in communications traffic data so that they can more easily prosecute ‘intellectual property infringements’," says Open Rights Group’s Suw Charman.

"Thanks to a combination of two fast-tracked EU directives, they may just get their wish: and allow a UK plan to limit civil liberties to turn into a privacy-invading free-for-all by the entertainment lobby."

Existing Europe-wide data protection laws allow companies to store customer data only as long as it’s needed for billing purposes, usually a month or two, says the NYT, adding:

"Representatives of fixed-line and mobile phone companies, Internet service providers and cable companies have joined forces to try to persuade Parliament to vote against the law."

"They say it would be ineffective in tracking terrorists’ e-mail communications because suspects could simply sign up with e-mail providers based outside Europe. Storing all e-mail, including spam, would not help catch terrorists, they say, but it might encourage Europeans to move their e-mail accounts to a non-European service provider.

"The industry’s main worry, however, is cost. It estimates that telecommunications companies would have to store 50 times the data they do now. There is no provision under the draft law to compensate phone companies and Internet providers."

Also read:-
New York Times – Europe Expected to Require Keeping of Phone-Call Data, December 13, 2005
Open Rights Group – Big Music tries Europe hi-jack, November 23, 2005

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 13th, 2005 at 6:52 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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