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Re: [privacy] Germans Protest Data Mining Law
From: Florian Weimer <fw () deneb enyo de>
Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2008 12:09:53 +0100
* Paul Ferguson:
Via UPI. [snip] Protests coincided with the filing of a lawsuit supported by thousands in Germany in opposition to a new law allowing the retention of telecommunication data. Protesters rallied in several German cities to support a lawsuit backed by more than 30,000 Germans filed to fight legislation that permits the storing of Internet data and telephone records for up to six months as part of wider counter-terrorism efforts, Deutsche Welle said Wednesday. [snip]
Just a bit of context, which may be hard to find: Over the course of 2006 and 2007, it became clear that the existing legal framework not only failed to mandate data retention, it even made it illegal. That's why most large ISPs and telcos stopped keeping records not strictly necessary for billing purposes in early 2007. Previously, storing such data (for instance, details when an IP address was dynamically assigned to a particular customer) for about three months was standard industry practice (and basically everyone with a large customer base did it, so most consumers were affected). The new legislation restores the old state of affairs. The main difference is that data retention is compulsory instead of optional, and that the retention period will increase from three to six months (it's not "up to", it's six months). It also applies to VoIP services. The most controversial change is the requirement to keep mail server logs for extended periods of time. (However, the previous data retention policies of large German email providers are not really public, so it's hard to tell if it's actually a significant upgrade.) Other changes just clarify existing practice by courts, law enforcement, and service providers. What might be a bit problematic for some is that the retained data may only be used to fullfil law enforcement requests; you cannot use it for spam fighting or marketing purposes. The whole thing is deemed so sensitive because most German Internet users subscribe to services that assign IP addresses which change at least once a day, fueling a strong belief in anonymity on the Internet. Oh, and all this has got nothing to do with counter-terrorism. _______________________________________________ privacy mailing list privacy () whitestar linuxbox org http://www.whitestar.linuxbox.org/mailman/listinfo/privacy
Current thread:
- [privacy] Germans Protest Data Mining Law Paul Ferguson (Jan 02)
- Re: [privacy] Germans Protest Data Mining Law Florian Weimer (Jan 03)