Europe´s plan to spy out citizens grows

national | miscellaneous | news report

Sunday June 30, 2002 19:49

by Tini

twister at stop1984 dot com

Privacy is out when government stores data for months, years ...

Europe´s plan to spy on their citizens grow while Data Retention is allowed --- in short: storing all your tk-data

The EU-Parliament decided, contrary to the central statement of the
directive about data protection and the recommendations of the Commitee
on Legal Affairs and Citizens' Rights, to permit data retention
(=the storage of telecommunication data without a warrant, without a case-by-case-decision...)

Thus the member states are legitimized to enact national laws which
obligate providers to store electronic communication data disregarding the
existing rules about data protection!

See what shall be stored if the wish-list of Europol will come true:
http://www.stop1984.com/index2.php?text=letter_retained_data.txt

And then you have an idea about what the governments wants to know about you.
They want to know (and stored for later usage)
If you have made phonecalls (cellular phone or your phone at home)
Who you have spoken to on the phone and how long.
Who is paying your phone-bill.
Which websites you have been visiting.
Which e-mails you have sent - to which address and the size of it.
And so on and so on

People might say that it is not "that bad" as there is no content being stored.
But -- if your government (even after months or years as some governments wish) that you have
visited certain web-pages, certain newsgroups, that you have had contact to certain persons,
does content really matter at all?

So imagine the next time you want to protest against something and you are not allowed to leave the country
because your telecommunication data points out that you have visited indymedia-sites too often and might
be a potential "hooligan". Or the police looks for a sexual offender and you might have to answer their
questions because your data says that you are watching pictures on porn-sites too often.
The list of the things which could be done with this data is sheer endless - it is up to you to tell your
governments that you do not agree to being treatened like a "suspected criminal".

Data Retention can easily be used against political dissidents as Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation
has said (see http://www.stop1984.com/index2.php?text=letter_stallman.txt for details)
It is an easy way to gain more control and to find out even the most intimate details about you.

Do you think that the presumption of innocence is anything more than just a word when any data of anybody
is being collected and stored? Do you think that it can be right to store your intimate data just because
it might happen that it might be needed somewhen to track criminals?
And - as fighting terrorism is used as a reason for Data Retention:
Could those measures do anything against terrorism at all?

Are you willing to sacrifice your intimacy?
If not sign on:
http://www.stop1984.com/index2.php?text=letter.txt