After 5 years of fighting against plans for mandatary data retention, EDRI is deeply disappointed that a majority in the European Parliament has adopted a law decreeing very broad and long retention of telephony and internet traffic data, with access granted for all sorts of undefined crimes. Please visit the special Campaign WIKI for all details and relevant documents.

Digital Rights Ireland will formally launch at a press conference in the Conference Room in Pearse Street Library, at 11-am on Tuesday 6 December. The group has been formed to defend civil, human and legal rights in a digital age. Digital Rights Ireland will be discussing its mission, and current developments in relation to Data Retention, IRMA legal action and other matters.

Digital Rights Ireland is chaired by UCD Law Lecturer TJ McIntyre and is comprised of academics, journalists and technologists. The group believes that citizens' digital rights are being eroded - the rights we expect in the real world are being stripped from us in the online world. Protection of these rights will involve public promotion of digital rights, and lobbying for their protection where required.

Digital Rights Ireland is a contact point for policy makers who wish to gauge the impact of their regulation in this complicated, and sometimes technical, area. In addition, the group aims to provide an informed position on issues in the digital rights field, free from any commercial or political bias. Current areas of concern for the group include data retention, rights to privacy/data protection, helping people to fight spam, and intellectual property issues. Digital Rights Ireland also aims to inform citizens of their rights, and how to exercise them. To that end, collaborators already have produced pamphlets and research material on areas such as SMS spam and the Data Protection & Freedom of Information Acts. Further pamphlets, on matters such as libel liability for online speech, will follow shortly.

The French government has decided to apply the urgency procedure to a new anti-terrorism draft law, with only one reading by each Chamber. The draft law was already passed by the National Assembly (French Lower House) on 29 November 2005 and will be examined by the French Senate in late December or early January 2006. The proposal creates increasing powers for the police and the intelligence services, thus undermining the protection of formal judicial procedures.

The law will extend the use of video-surveillance, authorising private parties to install CCTV cameras in public places "likely to be exposed to terrorist acts", and in places open to the public when they are "particularly exposed to risks of aggression or theft". Obviously, this covers almost any public or privately-owned place, including shops. In case of emergency, CCTV cameras may be installed prior to any authorisation.

In Poland, the parliamentary leader of the new social-right governing party 'Law and Justice', Przemyslaw Gosiewski, has called for a new law to introduce mandatory telephony data retention for 15 years. His call followed an article the day before, on 22 November 2005, in the leading newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza with a cry from local investigators that they are unable to effectively prosecute corruption without telephony billing data from the last 4 years.

Poland only just formed a new minority-government after the elections, but the new conservative government does not seem to have a clear plan on this issue. They seem to have just responded spontaneously, but with a large parliamentary majority as the unfortunate result.

Gosiewski can count on support from two smaller populist parties: Andrzej Lepper's 'Selfdefense' and the extreme nationalists from the 'Union of Polish Families'. Both parties are most eager to prove that most (rich) entrepreneurs are thieves.

European Digital Rights and Privacy International are urgently calling on the individual members of the European Parliament to reject the misguided compromise proposal on data retention. Party leaders of the christian-democrats and social-democrats in the parliament have agreed behind closed doors to allow for mandatory data retention of telephony and internet data for a period of 6 to 24 months, with even longer terms at the individual discretion of every member state, including the purpose of 'prevention of criminal offences'. This compromise completely overrules the suggestions of the appropriate parliamentary LIBE committee and ignores all the legal and technical objections against the inclusion of location and internet data.

On Tuesday 6 December the open letter will be offered to all 731 members of the European Parliament, endorsed by many digital rights groups, providers, consumer unions and other concerned parties. The full list of endorsements will be available on Tuesday afternoon 6 December.

Behind closed doors, representatives of the Council of Ministers of Justice (JHA Council), representatives from the Commission and the leaders in the European Parliament of the social-democrat and christian-democrat groups have agreed to introduce an unprecedented law (directive) on mandatory data retention in the EU. The groups have agreed to introduce mandatory retention for fixed and mobile telephony data and for internet log-in-log-off, for e-mail records and for Voice over IP records. There is only one last formal hurdle; the plenary vote in the European Parliament on Monday evening 12 December 2005.

But in practice this vote hardly has any meaning, given the majority adoption of the principles of extensive data retention. The agreed minimum period is 6 month, the maximum period 24 months. But member states may also decide on any longer term they find necessary, including the new 15 years proposal from the Polish government (see article 3 in this EDRI-gram). This is foreseen by the new article 11: "A Member State facing particular circumstances warranting an extension for a limited period of the maximum retention period referred to in Article 7 may take the necessary (...) measures. The Member State shall immediately notify the Commission and inform the other Member States of the measures taken by virtue of this Article and indicate the grounds for introducing them."

The EDRI and XS4ALL petition against data retention is closed and has been offered to Jean Marie Cavada, the chairman of the Europarliament committee on civil liberties and Alexander Alvaro, the Europarl rapporteur on data retention.

The petition has attracted over 58.000 signatures, of which over 21.000 from the Netherlands (where the campaign was launched), almost 7.000 from Germany and almost 6.000 from Finland.

All previous EDRI-gram articles about data retention http://www.edri.org/issues/privacy/dataretention

The EDRI and XS4ALL petition against data retention has been closed. It has been offered to Jean Marie Cavada, the chairman of the Europarliament committee on civil liberties and Alexander Alvaro, Europarl rapporteur on data retention.

The petition has attracted over 58.000 signatures, of which over 21.000 from the Netherlands (where the campaign was launched), almost 7.000 from Germany and almost 6.000 from Finland.

Runners-up in the daily country count are Bulgaria (over 3.000), Sweden and Spain (over 2.000 each), Austria (over 1.750). France, the UK, Italy, Belgium, the United States and Slovenia have each contributed over a 1.000 signatures.

85 organisations and companies have signed in support of the petition. The petition is available in 21 languages, with Portuguese as the last