US Government Pushing Pro And Anti-Privacy Internet Rules At The Same Time

from the figure-this-one-out dept

Ah, the hypocrisy of politicians. We've pointed out in the past how often politicians seem to push for data retention laws and privacy laws at the same time, without realizing the two are in fundamental conflict. It looks like the Obama administration is going through a bit of that as well. The FTC has been threatening to force browser makers to include a do not track feature, that would let people surf without having their data retained. And yet... at the same time, the Justice Department is pushing for extensive data retention laws, with the help of the supposed "small government" Congressional reps who don't even seem to realize what they're supporting. Even worse, Congress seems so eager to push for a data retention law that some Congressional Reps are apparently annoyed that the Justice Department hasn't just handed them a bill to approve.

The problem, of course, is that these politicians don't actually fully understand what the issues are involved here. They're viewing the issues on a very narrow basis. On the "do not track" issue, they think "privacy is important, of course we support privacy -- do not track is important." On the "data retention" issue, they think "well, law enforcement needs to have access to data to solve crimes, and without requiring internet companies to retain data, then it'll make law enforcement harder, so of course we need to have data retention." What they don't recognize is that these two things are in fundamental conflict with each other. Requiring data retention means less privacy. Period. But these politicians never actually think that far.

Filed Under: data retention, do not track, privacy

Should Data Just Fade Away?

from the sometimes-yes,-but-often-no dept

Michael Scott points us to a report suggesting that one way to deal with the privacy issues of data stored online is to set up databases that automatically have plans to let data "fade away" over a certain period of time. Of course, I'm not sure what's particularly new or unique about this. Lots of companies have systems in place to purge types of data after it reaches a certain age. Most companies have log files that delete after 6 or 12 months or whatever. The other issue, of course, is that with new data retention laws in place, many companies are forced by the government to retain certain types of data. And, finally, even if you plan for certain data to be deleted, there's not necessarily a guarantee that it actually has been deleted.

Filed Under: data, data retention, privacy

Australian Gov't Says ISPs Should Spy On Users... At The Same Time It's Trying To Attack Google For Doing Less?

from the um,-hypocrisy-much? dept

We've been writing about the Australian government -- mainly Stephen Conroy -- the politician who is actively trying to censor the internet, who is absolutely livid at Google, mainly because the company has accurately pointed out what a bad idea the censorship program would be. He's been making ridiculous and uninformed fear mongering statements about Google for a few weeks now. The latest, which is a blatant falsehood, is that Google's WiFi snarfing collected personal banking details. But, of course, as anyone who actually knows how these things work can tell you, banking sites use encryption. Google can only read unencrypted data, and all of the evidence suggests that Google discarded any encrypted info (not that it could do anything with it anyway).

Of course, while Conroy is grandstanding about how Google might have possibly, maybe collected a tiny snippet of unsecure info that passed through an open WiFi network while it was driving by -- saying that it was "the largest privacy breach in history across Western democracies," -- his government, in his area of regulation, is working on data retention plans that would require ISPs to spy on your internet usage. They don't just want ISPs to store your IP addresses. They want your browsing history and every email stored -- just in case the government wants to go back and check it some time.

That seems like a significantly bigger privacy breach than anything Google did.

Filed Under: australia, data retention, isps, spying, stephen conroy

As Google Hands Over Collected WiFi Data In Germany, France And Spain, Ireland Tells Google To Destroy It

from the mixed-messages dept

We recently covered how the data that Google collected via its Street View WiFi efforts was caught in this weird legal limbo, between privacy laws, data retention laws and rules about destroying evidence. However, it looks like that's getting settled... but in very different ways in different countries. Somehow, Google has worked out a way to hand over the data in Germany, France and Spain... but over in Ireland, Google has been ordered to destroy the data. Not quite sure how this squares with the privacy laws in Germany, France and Spain... but hopefully we'll find out that the data collected by this system was mostly meaningless and we can get over the hype surrounding this whole thing.

Filed Under: data collection, data retention, europe, france, germany, ireland, privacy, spain, wifi
Companies: google

EU Politicians Tricked Into Supporting Data Retention On Search Terms... 'For The Children'

from the privacy-vs.-data-retention dept

Slashdot points us to a story about how many EU Parliament Members signed on to a declaration supporting the creation of an "early warning system to combat sexual child abuse." Sounds good, right? But the devil is very much in the details. Christian Engstrom notes that many of the MEPs who signed on didn't realize that part of the declaration was to extend already controversial data retention laws to search engines, meaning that Google would need to store your search results far beyond what they currently do, just in case law enforcement wants to go trolling through your search history.

Of course, this seems doubly ironic since so many European countries are up in arms over Google collecting data via open WiFi networks. So, which is it, Europe? Do you want Google not to collect data, or do you want Google to save data for years in case police want to snoop through it? No, the two situations are not identical, but there is a clear conflict between EU privacy rules and EU data retention rules. On the one hand, they give Europeans the ability to supposedly take control over their private info, including requiring companies to delete it. On the other hand, they demand that companies store data in case the police would like to look through it.

Filed Under: data retention, eu, privacy, search

German Court Says Data Retention Rules Are Illegal

from the privacy-trumps dept

Around the world, law enforcement has pushed for stronger data retention rules for years, despite little evidence that it actually helps stop crimes (in fact, there's evidence that it helps to obscure important data by burying the data in tons of more data). Yet, since law enforcement and the media can team up to create moral panics, politicians usually end up passing such laws. However, over in Germany, the highest German court has ruled that the data retention law passed in 2008 is illegal, saying that "the law's erosion of personal privacy outweighed its usefulness in combating terrorism." Furthermore, the court has ordered that data retained under the law should be destroyed immediately. The court noted that the German law went well beyond EU requirements and potentially harmed the rights of German citizens by having them feel like they're under constant observation:

The storage of data could "cause a diffusely threatening feeling of being under observation that can diminish an unprejudiced perception of one's basic rights in many areas,"

Filed Under: data retention, germany, privacy

Swedish ISP Refuses To Give Up Info; Says IPRED Violates EU Privacy Rules

from the privacy-or-copyright? dept

Since the Swedish IPRED law went into effect, basically requiring ISPs to hand over info on those accused of copyright infringement, many ISPs have begun questioning the legality of the law itself -- specifically noting that the law clearly conflicts with privacy laws already in place in Sweden, as well as wider EU privacy rules. Last year, the ISP Ephone appealed a demand for info, and now Swedish telco giant Telia Sonera is doing the same in appealing a demand for info on whoever runs SweTorrents:

In its appeal, the ISP argues that IPRED is in direct violation of the EU's data retention directive, under which the privacy of the SweTorrents owner would be protected....

"The protection of privacy contained in the directive prevents the application of the Swedish IPRED law in this case," TeliaSonera's lawyer Patrick Hiselius said in a comment.

Separately, TeliaSonera also pointed out that the court doesn't seem to understand the most basic technical aspects of BitTorrent, in that it spoke of "the material that is uploaded on the website" in referring to SweTorrents. But SweTorrents is just a tracker, and thus there is no infringing material uploaded to its website. TeliaSonera points out that the demands for information on SweTorrents, then, is "based on faulty technical knowledge."

Filed Under: copyright, data retention, eu, ipred, privacy, sweden
Companies: teliasonera

More Surveillance Can Make Us Less Safe

from the this-isn't-so-hard dept

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, we had a post detailing why greater surveillance wouldn't have helped prevent the attacks. The data was all there, it just wasn't put together. And yet, in the time since then, the government has, in fact, continually focused on gathering more surveillance (warrantless wiretaps, anyone?), rather than on making better use of the data that is there. Back in 2002, in another post, we discussed how collecting more surveillance data in data retention schemes also made it harder to find the useful data and harder to connect the dots on the data that you had.

With the attempted terror attack on Christmas, it appears that this focus on doing more surveillance rather than better security was a major part in "failing to connect the dots" that allowed the plot to get as far as it did. The EFF points us to a report noting that the reason why Abdulmutallab was allowed on an airplane into the US in the first place -- despite widespread warnings, was that there was a backlog in processing all the data:

Abdulmutallab never made it onto a no-fly list because there are simply too many reports of suspicious individuals being submitted on a daily basis, which causes the system to be "clogged" -- overloaded -- with information having nothing to do with Terrorism. As a result, actually relevant information ends up obscured or ignored.

At what point do people realize that collecting more data doesn't make us more secure, and actually can do the opposite. As is pointed out at the Salon link above, the idea that you even can sacrifice liberty for security is wrong. The famous saying may say that you "deserve neither," but increasingly people are realizing that sacrificing liberty doesn't necessarily get you more security anyway.

Filed Under: data, data retention, liberty, safety, security

Irish Politician: Data Retention Is Good If You Have Nothing To Hide... But Don't Ask For My Data

from the apparenly-you've-got-something-to-hide dept

Thanks to reader eoinmonty for alerting us to the news that Ireland is debating a new data retention bill that seems to have similar problems to many other data retention bills: which is that it pays little attention to individual privacy rights or the fact that retaining the data is a costly mess for communications companies, and having all that data tends to make it more difficult to actually find the useful data. But a bigger point worth mentioning is the sheer hypocrisy of some supporting the bill. For example, politician Niall Collins trotted out the bogus "if you've got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" line that is a sure sign a politician doesn't know what he or she is talking about. As if to prove the point, Collins was then asked if he would be willing to provide his mobile phone bills and data on his email usage for the past two years (as the bill requires) he claimed not to understand the question and then refused to do so. Obviously, based on his own logic, we can only conclude that Niall Collins has something to hide.

Filed Under: data retention, ireland, niall collins

Once Again Privacy Laws And Anti-Piracy Data Retention Laws Conflict

from the ain't-that-always-the-way? dept

We've noticed in the past that there are two massively conflicting ideas pushed by politicians: privacy laws that require companies to dump data they collect on users and data-retention laws that require companies to hold onto data for law enforcement or anti-piracy efforts. That seems to be showing up in Sweden now, where the recent IPRED law required ISPs to turn over data on those accused of file sharing. However, that simply led many Swedish ISPs to stop keeping log files. So, of course, some Swedish politicians put forth a data retention amendment, requiring ISPs to keep logs, which sounds great until lots of folks recognized this would clearly violate privacy laws already in place (via Michael Scott). You get the feeling we're going to see a lot more of these sorts of conflicts in the near future.

Filed Under: data retention, ipred, privacy, sweden