The French newspaper Le Monde has a number of articles on new plans from the French government for anti-terrorism legislation. On 6 September the Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin presented a rough impression of 16 new measures to the members of parliament. The package will be presented to the Council of Ministers in October 2005.

Some of the proposed measures are:

-An extension of the scope of camera surveillance, to include the possibility to film the public streets in front of certain organisations that 'are exposed to the risk of terrorist acts'. In this context, specifically synagogues and confessional schools are mentioned, but local authorities may also order industry and public transport to do the same. Le Monde bluntly states that this intention clearly shows that terrorism is used as a pretext by de Villepin, since he tried to introduce such broader surveillance powers before he became Prime minister. The camera images will have to be kept for 1 month.

On Monday 5 and Tuesday 6 September the UK presidency tried its best to convince member of the European Parliament to give up their resistance against mandatory data retention. On Monday the parliamentary committee on civil liberties was addressed by the UK chairman of the criminal matters working group, Simon Watkin and by the London police special operations veteran David Johnson. Watkin made it clear the Council would continue to work on its proposal, ignoring all the legal advices that only the European Commission is qualified to propose data retention, with full co-decision rights from the European Parliament.

Johnson gave the committee several examples how GSM traffic data were used to solve murders and kidnappings. He saw it fit to also present pictures of a burned body. Funnily, at the end of his presentation, he showed a copy of the EDRI petition website, with the 3 objections that data retention is invasive, illegitimate and illusory. "Do these claims really stand up to scrutiny?" asked Johnson, in stead of asking himself if his own claims about the usefulness of data retention could really stand up to any scrutiny.

In order to convince the European Parliament of the need for mandatory data retention, the UK presidency of the EU has challenged the validity of the European Convention of Human Rights. The UK Home Office secretary, Mr Clarke, basically told the European Parliament on 7 September that the 50 year old convention was outdated. Talking about the need "to balance important rights for individuals against the collective right for security", Clarke said: "The view of my Government is that this balance is not right for the circumstances which we now face – circumstances very different from those faced by the founding fathers of the European Convention on Human Rights - and that it needs to be closely examined in that context."

Clarke was specifically referring to the difficulty under the Convention of deporting people suspected of being involved with terrorism, but obviously thought it was acceptable to attack the general principle of protecting citizens against their governments by granting them inalienable minimum rights and freedoms.

European Digital Rights is kindly inviting all interested people to attend a special public pre-event to the annual DPA conference in Montreux, Switzerland on 13 September 2005. EDRI, together with other NGO's defending digital civil rights, is organising two panels, on biometrics and on data retention.

Strategies for International Privacy Protection
=Issues, Actors, and Future cooperation=

Time and place: Tuesday 13 September 2005, 14:30-18:00, in the Montreux Conference Center, Grand-rue 95, CH-1820 Montreux, Switzerland

The EDRI and XS4ALL petition against data retention has attracted almost 30.000 signatures, of which over 10.000 from the Netherlands (where the campaign was launched) and over 5.000 from Germany. The number three position is held by Finland, with almost 5.000 signatures. Runners-up in the daily country count are Bulgaria, Austria and Italy, with over a 1.000 signatures each. In Sweden, Belgium, France, the UK and Hungary over 500 people each have signed the petition.

Currently, 55 organisations and companies have signed in support of the petition. The petition is now available in 14 languages. Slovenian will be added later today as the 15th translation.

The campaign continues to invite signatures and support throughout September 2005, when EDRI expects a heated political battle between the

The general German industry association (BDI) and the two telecommunication associations (BITKOM and VATM) have jointly published a strong position paper against the European proposals for mandatory data retention.

The German industry calls on both the European Commission and the ministers of Justice and Home Affairs to provide a solid and adequate impact assessment, since "LEAs have demonstrated neither the concrete need for a data retention regime nor the alleged lack of effectiveness of the current practice."

"Industry would like to point out that the European Union is confronted with a crisis of acceptance and a loss of confidence because politicians are too often unable to explain the purpose and benefits of European activities to citizens and industry."

The industry mentions 5 more specific demands on both Commission and Council:

The German Constitutional Court has outlawed a special security law of the state of Niedersachsen that allowed police to wiretap telephone connections without any specific suspicion, as well as collect traffic data, GSM location data, e-mail and SMS traffic. The ruling also affects the state of Thuringen, with a similar law, and Bavaria, currently developing a similar law.

The Court outlines that under the German constitution interception is only possible under strict conditions. The security law is too vague (not specific enough and not enough standardised) and doesn't guarantee that completely private conversations are excluded or immediately deleted from the record. Preventive interception can only be lawful according to the Court if there are specific indications pointing to the preparation or planning of a criminal act.

On 27 July 2005 the Italian government published a decree 'with urgent measures to fight international terrorism'. Under Article 6 all telephony providers are obliged to store traffic data until 31 December 2007. The measure was converted into law on 31 July 2005. The data retention period for information about mobile and fixed telephony in Italy thus minimally is 2 years and 5 months, but the decree also obliges providers not to destroy any traffic data they already have of their customers, at least two years for telephony providers. Internet providers must retain all data for at least 6 months, with a possibility for extension to another 6 months. The access barrier to the data is lowered to the (deputy) public prosecutor, in case the investigation requires the data urgently. However, any such order has to be approved within 48 hours by an investigative judge.