Data Retention in Europe

The European ministers of Justice and the European Commission want to keep all telephone and internet traffic data of all 450 million Europeans. If you are concerned about this plan, please sign the petition.

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.

If you live in Europe and are concerned about this, please sign the petition here.

[via Inside Google, via Irish Eyes]

Technorati tag: privacy