The European Union is considering a plan which would force telecommunications companies to log and store all e-mail, internet, and mobile phone calls for one year. The plan is part of a wave of new anti-terror measures sweeping across the Continent in the wake of the July bombings in London.

There is a growing awareness across Europe that significant portions of the large immigrant population from North Africa and the Middle East have extremist religious views. Terrorist threats are now seen as coming from domestic as well as foreign forces. Further, there is a growing realization among politicians in Europe--something the intelligence community has known for years--that Europe is exporting jihadi ideology. Dozens of websites operate on the Continent that openly support, raise funds, and recruit for terrorist organizations. Hundreds more preach an extremist version of political Islam, and serve as fronts and ideological supporters of terrorist groups.

The proposed security measures have triggered great debate in Europe. Civil libertarians argue that tracking personal internet and phone data are a violation of privacy rights and could lead to abuse. The telecommunications industry claims the new measures could cost over $100 million.

The fight for the new anti-terror measures is being led by British Home Secretary Charles Clarke. Clarke, however, has failed to garner enough support from the 70 ministers now meeting in England to discuss the issue.

The Independent is reporting that Clarke is still confident that some sort of data storage agreement will be reached by the end of the year. A spokesman for the European Telocommincations Network Operator's Association claims that the data storage provisions violate EU privacy rules.

Phone calls from land lines are already tracked and stored in both Europe and North America. Despite this, we have learned to live with our telephone providers keeping records of our calling habits and understand that those records can be handed over to law enforcement officials upon a court order.

Putting aside the financial concerns, what is the civil libertarian argument that our mobile phone calls, e-mails, and internet viewing records should not be made available to law enforcement, but that our land-line telephone records can? Seriously, what is the major difference?

It seems that the only difference is that there is an expectation of privacy in the former but not the latter. But we do not have an expectation of privacy for our phone records precisely because we know those records are kept and that courts can compel companies to turn them over. If we knew that our e-mails, internet clicking, and mobile phone conversations were being logged we would lose our expectation of privacy in those as well.

One is considered normal because it is already done, the other considered 'a privacy concern' simply because it has not been done already. Circular logic.

Further, most of us already understand that our e-mails are being logged, either by our employers (when done from the office) or our ISPs. Didn't know that? Trust me, as one who has made more than a few requests from ISPs to help track down an IP address because of threatening statements, you should really know that you are being watched online.

The EU should pass this legislation. It makes sense.

Posted by: Rusty at 09:03 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 551 words, total size 4 kb.