The Dutch presidency of the European union drafted a revised proposal for the mandatory storing of telecommunication data. The new proposal seems to let the members states free in choosing the time period and raises many questions with regard to its scope.
France, Ireland, the UK and Sweden drafted the original proposal to the Council of the European Union to store the telecommunication data of all 450 million EU citizens for a period of 12 to 36 months, for law enforcement purposes. These so-called traffic data reveal who has been calling and e-mailing whom, which websites they have visited, and even where people were with their mobile phones.
The plan addresses providers of telephony and internet, both networks and services. They will have to store the traffic data of all their users, not just those of suspects. The traffic data will be accessible for law enforcement authorities and intelligence services, not just nationally, but across all EU-borders. The member states decide themselves on the powers they grant to obtain access nationally.
The new, revised proposal sets the retention period to 12 months. But no member state will be bound by this limit: "Member States may have longer periods for retention of data dependent upon national criteria when such retention constitutes a necessary, appropriate and proportionate measure within a democratic society". Where the original proposal puts the maximum limit at 36 months for law enforcement purposes, the new draft has no limit at all. The new draft also allows the retention of certain data (especially internet traffic data) for a shorter period.
The most significant change might be in article 3 of the draft. The new draft states that the mandatory retention applies to "data processed and stored for billing, commercial or any other legitimate purposes by providers". It is unclear and unexplained how to interpret this line. One could read that mandatory retention does only apply to data already stored by a provider. In other words, if a provider doesn't store a particular type of data at all, the data retention obligations would not apply. Such an interpretation raises many questions. Can telecommunication providers decide themselves what to store or will members states make a list of those data? The proposal does not offer any explanation on this crucial sentence.
Draft Framework Decision on the retention of data (14.10.2004)
http://register.consilium.eu.int/pdf/en/04/st13/st13353.en04.pdf
Civil Society representatives, user and consumer advocates were not allowed to voice their concerns on social, cultural and economic consequences of a wide-spread introduction of so-called Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology during a hearing organized by the European Commission on 11 October, in Brussels. Stopping short from actually censoring these concerns, which were voiced by a large number of advocacy groups and individuals during a recent consultation on DRM, the Commission's DG Internal Market, who organized the event, invited only a few representatives of organizations that had taken a critical stance towards DRM.
Instead, lobbyists representing industry firms hoping to make big money with the technology were given abundant speaking time, very often two to three times as much as the allowed five-minute limit. This led to time running out in the end. And only at the very end the slot was planned during which most Civil Society speakers hoped to voice their concerns or talk about the various court cases that consumers have won against producers of media made useless by DRM. Thus the theme 'Developments in case law as well as relevant economic, social or cultural or technological developments' was skipped from the agenda.
The Hearing - originally organized to help the Committee established under Article 12 of the EU Copyright Directive, the so-called Contact Committee, evaluate the way Article 6 of that same Directive is being transposed, was thus turned into a self-reflection of the industry positions already dominant within this Committee. The same applies for the so-called High-Level Group on Digital Rights Management (HLG) brought together by the European Commission. The European Consumer's Office, the only organization present in that group not representing industry interests, withdrew its support for the Final Report.
Even thought there are still lots of conflicts between content industry lobbies like MPA and IFPI on the one side and hardware makers like Panasonic and Apple, united in EICTA, on the other side, the main line of conflict was between those industries and Collecting Societies like the French SACEM, the Belgian Auvibel and the German GEMA. The Commission obviously would like to reconcile the approaches of those two parties, but does not know how to avoid double payment by consumers if DRM-protected works should also be subjected to levies by Collecting Societies, levies intended to compensate for private copying that can no longer happen if the work is protected against copying.
Programme of the Commission Hearing (11.10.2004)
www.edri.org/files/EC_DRM_041012.pdf
Submissions to the EU Consultation on Digital Rights Management
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/eeurope/2005/all_about/digita...
Response to the Consultation by Ross Anderson, Chairman of EDRI member FIPR
http://www.fipr.org/copyright/ipr-consult.html
Response to the consultation by privatkopie.net, supported by EDRI member Bits of Freedom
http://www.privatkopie.net/files/privatkopie-bof_on-DRM.pdf
(Contribution by Andreas Dietl, EDRI EU Affairs Director)
Just before the Commission hearing on DRM, EDRI member FIPR (Foundation for Information Policy Research) organised a 2 day workshop on the future of EU legislation on copyright in Cambridge.
In his opening remarks, FIPR chairman Ross Anderson pointed to the 'big, greedy' industry interests dominating the discussion about so-called Intellectual Property Rights at present and called for a similarly 'big, greedy counterforce' which, he said, was already emerging from an ad-hoc alliance of industries concerned about copyright extremism, of user and consumer advocates.
Teresa Hackett summed up the issues in the Commission review. She pointed to the obvious contradiction between the Commission's claims that the review was just about 'finetuning for consistency' and the origins of the review at the 2002 Santiago de Compostela revision conference, where Commission representatives had openly talked about a 'Super Directive' on copyright and related rights they wished to have. The inherent danger was, she said, that the 2001/29/EC Directive (known as the EUCD), which the Commission is proud of, but which is indeed a badly and inconsistently drafted law, would be used as a blueprint for revising also neighbouring Directives such as the ones on Software or on Rental Rights. As for the Database Directive, she said it should be repealed, because it never had any justification and allowed rightsholders to get, using some simple tricks, eternal copyright on databases.
Volker Grassmuck of Humboldt University, who also runs the privatkopie.net project, joined Mrs. Hackett in his criticism of the EUCD, which was, according to Copyright expert Professor Bernt Hugenholtz of the University of Amsterdam, an 'unimportant and possibly invalid' piece of lawmaking. With respect to the consultation, Mr. Grassmuck said, the exhaustive list of exceptions in the EUCD must be opened and the definition of DRM, which contained indeed a triple tautology, must be reviewed. He spoke in support of a fruit-of-the-poisoned tree approach, as Ross Anderson had laid out in his response to the DRM consultation: a DRM which is abused contrary to other settled law should lose its protection against circumvention under the EUCD.
The Deadline for the Commission Consultation is 31 October, and EDRI encourages all interested persons and organisations to contribute to it.
Workshop Program 9 and 10 October 2004
http://www.fipr.org/workshopOct2004.html
Commission Staff Working Paper on the review of the EC legal framework in the field of copyright and related rights
http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/copyright/docs/review/sec-20...
(Contribution by Andreas Dietl, EDRI EU Affairs Director)
The winners of the fifth Swiss Big Brother Awards were announced on Saturday 16 October, during the awards ceremony in the impressive old Steeltec industrial hall in Emmenbrücke (Lucerne). Half of the 52 public nominations were sent in for the 'State' category. The master of ceremony, the actor Ernst Jenni, said he was pleased to see that government was finally learning from corporate marketing practices, and were starting to take their customers more serious. The winner was the commander in chief of the Swiss Air Force, corps commander Hansruedi Fehrlin, for deploying unmanned surveillance drones of the type 'ADS 95 Range', to closely monitor cars, buildings and citizens from an invisible and inaudible height of 1.500 meters. This secret surveillance measure became public when the Luzern police arrested 2 men who had driven into a forest near Emmen to smoke a joint. It turned out their behaviour was registered by the highly sensitive thermal camera's on board of the drone, and the incident reported by the military observers to the Luzern police.
2 more trophies were presented to the biggest snoopers in the categories 'Business' and 'Workspace'. In the business category, the price could hardly escape Santesuisse, the alliance of Swiss health insurers, for its successful implementation of the new tariff system 'Tarmed'. According to this regulation, general practitioners have to include a detailed code on all bills since 1 January 2004. Health insurers thereby gain access to particularly sensitive patient information. When the Master of Ceremony explained some of these codes to mean for example 'amputation of the penis - completely', the public became painfully aware of the implications of the codes. In the category 'Workspace' the Zurich municipal police out-performed the other seven competitors. Their management had secretly monitored the e-mail communication of several employees. Jury member Jacqueline Chopard, an attorney from Luzern, said the police especially deserved the price for not telling why they were secretly monitoring some of their staff. This was especially incredible given the 'mission statement' of the Zurich police: "We operate tactfully, with understanding, and ready to help, and we act appropriately and consequently, with consideration.
Additionally, a lifetime award was awarded for particularly insistent, life-long snitching to to the Lucerne-based farmer and national councillor (CVP) Josef Leu. As an MP he has been advocating a strengthening of the armed forces and the police since 1991. Apart from these four negative prizes, the positive Winkelried Award was granted to the Bern lawyer and city-council member Daniele Jenni, who regularly defends marginalized individuals, which are frequently expelled from the Bern inner City by municipal police.
Swiss Big Brother Awards - English press release (16.10.2004)
http://www.bigbrotherawards.ch/2004/presse/pressemitteilungen/bba.pres...
Extensive information on all the nominations (in German)
http://www.bigbrotherawards.ch/2004/presse/
José Manuel Barroso, the designated President of the European Commission, is working hard to find a compromise on the position of Mr. Buttiglione, the Italian candidate Commissioner for Justice and Civil Liberties. By a small majority, the Europarl Committee on Civil Liberties rejected his candidacy on 11 October, knowing well they can not oust single candidate Commissioners.
Barroso has met with leaders of the PSE (Social-Democrat) and ALDE (Liberal / Centrist) Groups in an effort to find a compromise that would be acceptable to the Italian government as well as to the MEPs opposed to the right-wing Conservative politician being in charge of anti-discrimination and Civil Liberties.
One option that is currently being discussed would be for Mr. Buttiglione to keep his job as the future head of the Justice, Freedom and Security Directorate General, but to have to pass competences in the fields of combating discrimination to other Commissioners, for example to Wladimir Spidla, who will be in charge of Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities.
If such a solution should still not satisfy angry MEPs, it may be doubled up by a Commission Initiative for an EU Anti-Discrimination Directive. The Commission has the sole right of initiative for Directives. MEPs have tabled a catalogue of seven requirements the EU Commission would have to fulfill in order to satisfy them and eventually get a positive vote for the Commissioners-yet-to-be. These requirements include increased competences in evaluating and even sacking Commissioners if they prove incompetent and an obligation for the Commission to submit all proposals submitted to the Parliament immediately.
The vote on the Barroso Commission will take place next week, as part of the Parliament's Strasbourg session. The new Commissioners should enter into office on 1 November. The Green Group, who are opposed to three more Commissioners whom they deem incompetent - Ingrida Udre (Latvia, Tax and Customs), Stavros Dimas (Greece, Environment), and László Kovacs (Hungary, Energy) - have already declared they will vote against the Barroso Commission.
There are also rumours that Mr. Buttiglione will announce his resignation shortly. In that case, Italy would have to send another candidate. This would give Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi an opportunity to delay the inauguration of the new Commission, thus forcing his rival Romano Prodi to stay in Brussels and work on with a Commission most members of which have already taken posts elsewhere - the EU would effectively be left without an executive branch.
Financial Times: European Deputies issue ultimatum on Buttiglione
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/3782f48c-2236-11d9-8c55-00000e2511c8.html
(Contribution by Andreas Dietl, EDRI EU Affairs Director)
According to a report in the EU eGovernment News, the formal approval of the draft Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions by the EU Competitiveness Council has been postponed due to translation delays.
"The political agreement between Member States over the draft Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions was expected to be approved during the EU's Competitiveness Council meeting held on 24/09/2004, before being sent back to the European Parliament for a second reading. However, the item was removed from the Council’s agenda due to delays in translation."
The Council text was agreed upon by the Member States on 18 May 2004. In many national parliaments a heated debate followed, asking the respective ministers to explain their approval of patents on software. The Dutch minister of Economical Affairs was even forced by the Dutch Parliament to withdraw his approval. In that light, the 'translation delays' give the Ministers welcome time to negotiate their strong political differences.
The European Parliament probably won't be able to start the second reading before the end of 2004. Opponents of software patentability look forward to this second reading, since the former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard was appointed to draw up the response. During the first reading, Rocard showed great care about the social and economical consequences of patenting computer algorithms.
A new campaign against software patents in the EU was launched today in 12 languages at www.nosoftwarepatents.com. The campaign is managed by Florian Müller of SWM Software-Marketing GmbH and is supported by three corporate partners: 1&1, Red Hat, and MySQL AB. "Software patents are used for anti-competitive purposes, stifle innovation, and would cost the entire economy and society dearly", Florian Müller says in the press release about the initiative.
Nosoftwarepatents website
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/intro/index.html
EU software patents directive delayed (11.10.2004)
http://europa.eu.int/ida/en/document/3378/194
Interview with Michel Rocard (Liberation, 20.06.2003, paid access)
http://www.libe.fr/page.php?Article=121303
English translation of the interview (for free) http://www.aful.org/wws/arc/patents/2003-06/msg00221.html
The French digital rights organization IRIS is upset about the continuous delay by the French government in publishing administrative decrees that would define mandatory data retention for telecommunication companies. During the open workshop in Brussels on 21 September 2004, a representative from the French Ministry announced these decrees would be published 'within the next few days' and would set the time period on 12 months. (See EDRI-gram 2.18)
The legal regime for data retention in France has originally been set by the law on daily safety (Loi sur la Sécurité Quotidienne - LSQ) from 15 November 2001, and has been later included in Article L34-1 of the electronic communications Codes. But the administrative decree that would define the obligation to store data beyond the immediate business purpose of transmitting and billing, is still unknown.
Shortly after the LSQ was adopted, EDRI-member IRIS filed a complaint against France with the European Commission. According to the complaint, Article 29 of the LSQ violated EU legislation principles. Half a year later, on 29 July 2002, the European Commission informed IRIS that they would put the complaint on hold until the decree was published, "because it is difficult to judge the compatibility of Article 29 of the LSQ with Community legislation in the absence of an application decree."
After the initial complaint, EU legislation was changed, specially with the 2002/58/CE Directive on personal data protection in the electronic communications sector and with the proposal for the draft framework decision on data retention. IRIS now writes: "By delaying for almost 3 years the publication of this decree, the French government has acted extremely opportunistic to avoid the risk of having to appear in the European Court of Justice. We have to recall that article 29 of the LSQ was presented, amongst the other provisions of the law, as a measure urgently required in the fight against terrorism."
In an earlier response to the LSQ, the French privacy authority CNIL demanded a maximum period of 3 months.
Press release IRIS (17.10.2004)
http://www.iris.sgdg.org/info-debat/comm-dr-chrono1004.html
IRIS chronology of French and EU measures on data retention, with details on the complaint
http://www.iris.sgdg.org/actions/retention/index.html
EDRI-gram 2.18, Brussels workshop on telecom data retention (22.09.2004)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number2.18/workshop
On 11 October, the Civil Liberties Committee of the European parliament (LIBE) organised a hearing on the Safer Internet Plus programme, covering 50 million euro for the years 2005-2008. Learning from past discussions in the European Parliament on the effectivity of this funding, the Commission wrote a pre-evaluation of the action plan. Rapporteur Edith Mastenbroek (Dutch Labour party) wholeheartedly agreed with the commission in putting the main focus on end-user empowerment, as opposed to central filtering. She suggested one major alteration in the suggested spending; in stead of spending 16 to 23% on the development of filter software and software for hotlines, she suggested to move that budget to the action line of raising public awareness (already taking 43 to 50% of the funding). The Commission should only fund research into the performance and the transparency of filter software.
On the first action line, the establishment of hotlines where citizens can report illegal and/or harmful content, Mastenbroek applauded the concern the Commission showed for civil liberties. In the pre-evaluation the Commission writes: "Other activists are concerned at the implications for civil liberties of measures taken to restrict circulation of content or access to content, particularly where measures taken ostensibly to restrict access by children to potentially harmful content also restrict access by adults to content which is legal for them." However, she insisted that this concern should be translated in specific recommendations regarding transparency of hotlines and notice and take-down procedures with ISPs.
Regarding the third action line, promoting of self-regulatory Codes of Conduct, to take 5 to 9% of the budget, Mastenbroek insisted on the involvement of user representatives and civil rights groups in creating Codes of Conduct.
Four experts were invited to give their vision on internet filtering: Yaman Akdeniz from Cyber-rights; Stephane Marcovitch, council member of EuroISPA; Diane Sutton from Save the Children and on behalf of EDRI Sjoera Nas (editor of EDRI-gram), each given 7 minutes to present their view on filtering. While Akdeniz explained the Committee about the important differences between harmful and illegal content, EURO-ISPA claimed they were working on a new Code of Conduct. The representative of Save the Children stated too little was done against child pornography, and the Commission should dedicate more funds to the tracking and tracing of abused children. Finally, EDRI talked about the dangers of internet filter software for both privacy and freedom of speech, calling on the Commission to create an exception on the circumvention ban for censorware, allowing researchers to legitimately investigate the technology, and publish blacklists and keywords.
The experts were interrupted for a secret vote on the position of Mr. Buttiglione, that lasted for 2 and a half hours. After the vote, the hearing lasted only very briefly, with only a few remarks and questions from the MEPs.
Safer Internet Plus programme 2005-2008
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/programmes/iap/docs/pdf/si_pl...
Commission ex-ante evaluation
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/programmes/iap/docs/pdf/si_pl...
4 Big Brother Award ceremonies will take place within the next 2 weeks. The Netherlands will start on Sunday 24 October, followed by a ceremony in Austria on 26 October, and ceremonies in Germany and Spain on 29 October.
For the Dutch BBA 3 persons were nominated in the category 'Persons'. Minister Remkes of the Interior, for a constant stream of proposals to enable intelligence services to data-mine data about innocent citizens and create more satellite interception capacity. EU Commissioner Bolkestein for closing a deal with US authorities to make the EU set aside its privacy principles in order to make it legitimate for airline companies to transfer all kinds of data about passengers to the US. Finally, the head of police of the city of Utrecht is lined up for a Big Brother Award for proposing the police should publish pictures of recurrent criminals on the Internet and in local magazines. The 12 nominations have 1 tendency in common: the fact that government is specialising in the collection of immense amounts of 'soft' data on innocent citizens.
Dutch Big Brother Awards (24.10.2004)
http://www.bigbrotherawards.nl/
Austrian Big Brother Awards (26.10.2004)
http://www.bigbrotherawards.at/
German Big Brother Awards (29.10.2004)
http://www.bigbrotherawards.de/
Spanish Big Brother Awards (29.10.2004)
http://es.bigbrotherawards.org/en/
Since 30 September 2004, all visitors to the United States are electronically face-scanned and fingerprinted at the US border. This 'biometric' information, together with a mass of associated personal data, can be shared throughout the US government. Personal files can also be shared internationally. These measures are part of an unprecedented traveller surveillance and profiling system that within fifteen years may encompass data on a billion people.
Privacy International has published an alarming report about the challenges US-VISIT poses to civil liberties, with a comprehensive flow-chart showing the detailed workings of the program.
Privacy International condemns the U.S.-VISIT Programme (28.09.2004)
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-7...
24 October 2004, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Dutch Big Brother Awards
http://www.bigbrotherawards.nl/
26 October 2004, Vienna, Austria
Austrian Big Brother Awards
http://www.bigbrotherawards.at/
29 October 2004, Bielefeld, Germany
German Big Brother Awards
http://www.bigbrotherawards.de/
29 October 2004, Sevilla, Spain
Spanish Big Brother Awards
http://es.bigbrotherawards.org/en/
15 November 2004, Brussels, Belgium
NEW tentative date EU Commission open workshop on spam
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/topics/ecomm/useful_informati...