What's wrong with data retention? The proposal to retain traffic data will reveal who has been calling and e-mailing whom, what websites people have visited and even where they were with their mobile phones. Telephone companies and internet services providers would be ordered to store all traffic data of their customers. Police and intelligence agencies in Europe would be granted access the traffic data. Various, competing proposals in Brussels mention retention periods from 6 months up to four years.
Data retention is an invasive tool that interferes with the private lives of all 450 million people in the European Union. Data retention is a policy that expands powers of surveillance in an unprecedented manner. It simultaneously revokes many of the safeguards in European human rights instruments, such as the Data Protection Directives and the European Convention on Human Rights.
Data retention means that governments may interfere with your private life and private communications regardless if you are suspected of a crime or not.
Data retention is not a solution to terrorism and crime!
In July 2005 the European Parliament adopted a report by Parliament member Alexander Alvaro on the mandatory data retention plan. The report concludes that the proposal is disproportionate. The report also questions the necessity, effectiveness and high costs for industry and telecommunication users.
No research has been conducted anywhere in Europe that supports the need and necessity of creating such a large-scale database containing such sensitive data for the purpose of fighting crime and terrorism.
The attacks on London are an attack on human rights. The protection of those human rights matters most when governments and societies face times of crisis. The worst possible response would be to jeopardise those carefully wrought rights by a panic-inspired response. A mass surveillance response to terror would result in a resounding success for the perpetrators of these attacks: a fundamental undermining of our most fundamental values.
What can you do to stop this plan?
If you are concerned about the European plans for data retention, please sign the petition and alert as many people as you can to support this campaign. The signatures will be sent to the European Commission and the European Parliament.
