The shadow of fascism is creeping up on us again in Europe.
The further US-ification of Germany… …appears to be firmly in place.
From German News:
Telephone surveillance expanded
In Germany, all telephone and internet connection data will be stored for half a year in the future. The federal Cabinet approved a resolution to that effect today. The information to be filed will be who called whom when. In the case of cellular-phone calls, the location at which the call was made will also be kept. The contents of telephone conversations will not be saved. The bill also introduces other changes to the regulations governing telephone surveillance. It is a subject of controversy because the data will be filed regardless of any concrete suspicion of a crime. Privacy advocates have already announced that they will challenge the changes on constitutional grounds. The bill represents the implementation by the federal government of a directive from the EU.
There is also this:
Schaeuble opposed to presumption of innocence
Federal Internal Affairs Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble wants to abolish the presumption of innocence when it comes to preventing terrorism. “The principle cannot apply for self-defence against threats”, he told the magazine ‘Stern’. Schaeuble also defended plans to allow police automatic access to digital records of passport photos. Karl-Dieter Moeller, a legal expert for ARD television criticized Schaeuble’s comments. He told the news website ‘tagesschau.de’ that “that would call a fundamental principle of the rule of law into question”.
Martin had a letter from some government quango yesterday inviting him to register the details of all our phone accounts.
To which my own response is “make me”.
This is all part of a quiet sea change in controls on the freedom to of Europeans to communicate with one another. The NYT, February 17:
PARIS, Feb. 19 — European governments are preparing legislation to require companies to keep detailed data about people’s Internet and phone use that goes beyond what the countries will be required to do under a European Union directive.
In Germany, a proposal from the Ministry of Justice would essentially prohibit using false information to create an e-mail account, making the standard Internet practice of creating accounts with pseudonyms illegal.
A draft law in the Netherlands would likewise go further than the European Union requires, in this case by requiring phone companies to save records of a caller’s precise location during an entire mobile phone conversation.
Even now, Internet service providers in Europe divulge customer information — which they normally keep on hand for about three months, for billing purposes — to police officials with legally valid orders on a routine basis, said Peter Fleischer, the Paris-based European privacy counsel for Google. The data concerns how the communication was sent and by whom but not its content.
But law enforcement officials argued after the terrorist bombings in Spain and Britain that they needed better and longer data storage from companies handling Europe’s communications networks.
European Union countries have until 2009 to put the Data Retention Directive into law, so the proposals seen now are early interpretations. But some people involved in the issue are concerned about a shift in policy in Europe, which has long been a defender of individuals’ privacy rights.
Under the proposals in Germany, consumers theoretically could not create fictitious e-mail accounts, to disguise themselves in online auctions, for example. Nor could they use a made-up account to use for receiving commercial junk mail. While e-mail aliases would not be banned, they would have to be traceable to the actual account holder.
“This is an incredibly bad thing in terms of privacy, since people have grown up with the idea that you ought to be able to have an anonymous e-mail account,” Mr. Fleischer said. “Moreover, it’s totally unenforceable and would never work.”
Mr. Fleischer said the law would have to require some kind of identity verification, “like you may have to register for an e-mail address with your national ID card.”
Jörg Hladjk, a privacy lawyer at Hunton & Williams, a Brussels law firm, said that might also mean that it could become illegal to pay cash for prepaid cellphone accounts. The billing information for regular cellphone subscriptions is already verified.
[…]
In the Netherlands, the proposed extension of the law on phone company records to all mobile location data “implies surveillance of the movement of large amounts of innocent citizens,” the Dutch Data Protection Agency has said.
More…
It’s all very well us Eurobloggers sitting here taking potshots at Bushco – and heaven know there’s cause enough – but meanwhile, quietly our own governments are drawing the net tighter on the expression of dissenting views and as individuals we’re doing bugger-all to fight it.
10 years down the line when your children ask you “What did you do in the information war, Mummy/Daddy?” what will you be able to say?
“Nothing really, but I moaned a lot?”
