Did The NYTimes Just Offload Its Front Page To The Atlantic?

Czech Court Says No To Data Retention Rules

from the good-for-them dept

Tue, Apr 5th 2011 11:17pm — Mike Masnick

There's been a big push around the globe, mainly by law enforcement but also with a helping hand from the entertainment industry, to force internet service providers to "retain data" for extensive periods of time, for various investigations. I've always been intrigued by the inherent conflict between data retention and privacy -- especially in Europe where they seem to be pushing quite strong for both conflicting concepts at the same time. Apparently, the two have come into legal conflict once again in a courtroom -- this time in the Czech Republic... and privacy has won out yet again.

In a ruling in the Czech Constitutional Court, the country's data retention rules have been ruled illegal, saying that it's a clear privacy violation. As the article notes, other countries, including Germany, Romania, Cyprus and Hungary have all run into similar problems trying to implement the European Data Retention Directive, and Sweden, Greece, Ireland and Austria have refused to implement the rules, because they don't see how it can be done and not violate privacy rules. Perhaps, at some point, the folks who wrote the original directive will realize that it can't be squared with Europe's privacy rules.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: czech republic, data retention, privacy

10 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Erik, 5 Apr 2011 @ 11:51pm

Sweden
The swedish government is actually hell-bent on implementing the data retention directive, and would have done so on the 16th of march, but for a small group of the parlament using a constitution-protection mechanism to table it for one year.

Sweden is, alas, no longer the good example it once was.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Christopher (profile), 6 Apr 2011 @ 1:18am
  
  Re: Sweden
  Sweden has been getting stupider on numerous things lately. With their anti-male 'rape' laws that basically take a woman's word as rote truth and other things, you would have to be insane to stay in Sweden unless you absolutely had to.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Wilson, 4 Jul 2011 @ 11:53pm
    
    Re: Re: Sweden
    It only means that the lawmakers elected into the parliament are incompetent and stupid. They simply lack common sense. That's all there is to it.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
-, 6 Apr 2011 @ 2:38am

Too bad my country just went through it silently, no public debate, little questioning afterward....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Peter S. Chamberlain (profile), 9 Apr 2011 @ 8:51am
  
  Re: Privacy, "My country"???
  You say "MY [your] country" just went through this, but nothing here reveals what country that is.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
zub, 6 Apr 2011 @ 5:40am

Surprising
I'm quite surprised to see a reasonable ruling from the Czech Republic. After all - a quick glace at the logo of Czech Ministry of Culture quickly shows the state of affairs there: http://www.mkcr.cz/images/design/ministerstvo-kultury.png (Insulting assumption of "copyright" a "culture" going hand in hand.)

(For extra context: I actually have Czech citizenship.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Lesath (profile), 6 Apr 2011 @ 7:26am

The obvious solution is to do away with the privacy rules.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Peter S. Chamberlain (profile), 9 Apr 2011 @ 9:02am
  
  Re: "do away with privacy"???!!!
  I hope you're kidding!
  Some of the biggest players in both the technical and political arenas have said things like "You have no privacy. Get over it.," and, at the same time, candidly admitted that "the laws are written by [their] lobbyists." It is long past time that the conservatives and the liberals, both of whom profess to support privacy rights as essential to liberty, which it is, quit partisan bickering and glory-hogging, get together, knock some of our "the people be damned" politicians of both parties' heads together, and pass some tough personal privacy laws broad enough to cover existing and new and emerging technology, etc., with real civil and criminal teeth in them. But don't bet on it because the money's on the other side.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Pixelation, 6 Apr 2011 @ 7:40am

Next, the Czech leadership should ask the **AA's for lots of cash, after that they should keep things the way they are.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Daragh O Brien, 6 Apr 2011 @ 6:23pm

Data Retention and Ireland
eh.. I believe you may be misinformed about Ireland's 'opposition' to the Data Retention Directive. the Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011 was enacted on Jan 26th and transposes the EU Directive into Irish law.

There is a challenge to the Directive being taken by Digital Rights Ireland (http://digitalrights.ie) in the European Court of Justice. The Irish government's objection was purely a procedural one - that the Directive hadn't been brought through the right procedural channel in the European Commission (and the enactment of the legislation in Ireland makes that objection moot).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]