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EU high court strikes down metadata collection law

danarhea

danarhea

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While the United States continues to debate metadata collection conducted in secret by the National Security Agency, the European Union has been openly collecting the same sort of data for eight years.

In the wake of terrorist attacks in Madrid (2004) and London (2005), the European Union passed a directive in 2006 requiring that all telecommunications providers retain all kinds of telephone and Internet metadata for at least six months and provide it to law enforcement upon request.

According to a ruling handed down Tuesday by the European Court of Justice, that directive is now invalid.
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In other news, the US has given Europe our constitution, since we weren't using it anyways.

Article is here.
 
danarhea said:
In other news, the US has given Europe our constitution, since we weren't using it anyways.

Article is here.
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It's not quite that easy.

This article is better suited to the needs of the discussion.
The EU's ongoing battle over data retention | Europe | DW.DE | 08.04.2014

The EU's ongoing battle over data retention
The European Court of Justice rules that citizens' telecommunications data can be retained only in cases of severe necessity, overturning EU guidelines. The issue has proven highly controversial in Germany.
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What this did is that EU nations who have had "lax" laws regarding data privacy have to set up their national legislation to fit according to the principles of data privacy. So they need to get in line with the ruling of the court. However, this comes with a set of very distinct consequences to the cohesion of the EU. Like this:

Greens want EU trial against Great Britain | Europe | DW.DE | 03.04.2014

Greens want EU trial against Great Britain
The spying scandal is at the forefront of the political agenda in Germany again. This time, however, the focus of contempt is not the NSA but the British intelligence services' GCHQ and its "Tempora" program.
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Because the UK is a prime offender being the "inner spy" for the circle of six or whatever its' called network of spying agencies, compromising EU data privacy against the NSA.

So you have that + the internal data collection programs that countries like France had for years now... all in all, this is a hard topic to discuss at an informed level now. Which is why I didn't post this story 2 days ago when it broke and the court ruling was given. Because there is no way to know where the chips have fallen just yet.
 
DDD said:
So it is no longer invalid, no longer in use?
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No... the EU has no jurisdiction to control the spy agencies of EU member states.

What the ruling has done is that it now forces, within a time limit yet to be properly established, national government to implement legislation in accordance to the ruling. So countries who have no real legislation preventing spying agencies to retain data and spy on their own citizens must implement legislation denying that power to the spy agencies and countries who have legislation that permit it, or are lax about it, must rewrite it... and countries with such legislation but who don't enforce it better start enforcing it.

So all in all, today nothing is different than what was 2 days ago when the ruling happened. What will happen is that at national level, a lot of discussions wil be had and each country will enact its own set of legislative measures in accordance to the EU court ruling. That is, if that ruling doesn't get appealed or overturned.

That's why I said in the above comment, lets see where the chips fall because the ruling, in and of itself, is just a principle which is honorable, true, but until it gets put in practice, is just talky talk.
 
Rainman05 said:
No... the EU has no jurisdiction to control the spy agencies of EU member states.

What the ruling has done is that it now forces, within a time limit yet to be properly established, national government to implement legislation in accordance to the ruling. So countries who have no real legislation preventing spying agencies to retain data and spy on their own citizens must implement legislation denying that power to the spy agencies and countries who have legislation that permit it, or are lax about it, must rewrite it... and countries with such legislation but who don't enforce it better start enforcing it.

So all in all, today nothing is different than what was 2 days ago when the ruling happened. What will happen is that at national level, a lot of discussions wil be had and each country will enact its own set of legislative measures in accordance to the EU court ruling. That is, if that ruling doesn't get appealed or overturned.

That's why I said in the above comment, lets see where the chips fall because the ruling, in and of itself, is just a principle which is honorable, true, but until it gets put in practice, is just talky talk.
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This is not correct, read the ruling... will explain later, dont have time right now.
 
danarhea said:
In other news, the US has given Europe our constitution, since we weren't using it anyways.

Article is here.
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If you look at the activity map for Malte Spitz, you will see where he probably didn't commit the murder. It is not certain, but it is a first refute of his having been on location.
 
It seems the EU does it differently. Rather than having the government collect all the data and store it, the telecom companies gather the data and keep it, providing to the government only upon request.

We should think about following their lead....
 
Henry David said:
It seems the EU does it differently. Rather than having the government collect all the data and store it, the telecom companies gather the data and keep it, providing to the government only upon request.

We should think about following their lead....
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Metadata collection should be expressly forbidden and if the government wants information from a private company, they should have to produce a valid warrant first; and it can only be used for individual accounts, not metadata collection.
 
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