1984 in 2004?
The EU is about to implement legislation that would compel phone networks and ISPs to preserve certain parts of their logs for no less than 12 months.
This was proposed jointly by Sweden, France, Ireland and the UK in April this year. I have only been able to find the proposition in Swedish; the task of finding such documents on the EU-site is daunting.
Going from the present legislation, where information of the kind considered here must be destroyed once there is no further use for it, to the new legislation where the information must instead be preserved is a huge step, a total turnaround even.
The proposition defines the information that must be preserved as:
- information needed to track and identify the origin of the communication including information about the user and the users connection,
- information needed to identify the route and destination of the communication,
- information needed to identify the date, time and duration of the communication,
- information needed to identify the communication (i.e. size and format of an email),
- information needed to identify the tools used for the communication,
- information needed to identify the geographical location from the start of and during the entire communication
The proposition stresses that no information about the contents of the communication should be preserved.
Reviewing this list is in itself a chilling exercise since the proposition presents a major invasion of privacy and decrease of anonymity in communications. A more in-depth analysis aggravates the problems even further. Considering the nature of much of the communication on the Internet, the condition that the contents of the communication must not be revealed is moot since it is often impossible to separate the contents from the package. I.e. Web addresses contain much information about the contents of the communication but are also necessary to provide the information required by the proposal.
Some problems:
- It would seriously hamper the anonymity of the Internet which is one of the major boons,
- it raises concerns about whether the information could be used in the wrong way, for instance for mapping political views or sexual preferences since it would not always be possible to avoid logging contents and since the information contained in knowing what web pages a person views is enormous,
- lastly there is always the fear that future incarnations of this legislation will put no limit on the information that can be gathered (yes I know this is a slippery slope argument).
In the light of revelations such as this one it is perhaps not very surprising that France would be in on something like this but it is frightening that Sweden is. However, it now seems that someone has caught on to the dangers of this proposal. The Swedish Committee on Justice wants to review the proposal to ensure that it’s impact on the privacy of the users is not to grave. I would want them to repeal the proposal altogether but since that isn’t going to happen I’ll settle for an exclusion of Internet traffic.
