[privacy] Germans Protest Data Mining Law

[Florian Weimer]

* Paul Ferguson:

> Via UPI.
>
> [snip]
>
> Protests coincided with the filing of a lawsuit supported by thousands in
> Germany in opposition to a new law allowing the retention of
> telecommunication data.
>
> Protesters rallied in several German cities to support a lawsuit backed by
> more than 30,000 Germans filed to fight legislation that permits the
> storing of Internet data and telephone records for up to six months as part
> of wider counter-terrorism efforts, Deutsche Welle said Wednesday.
>
> [snip]

Just a bit of context, which may be hard to find: Over the course of
2006 and 2007, it became clear that the existing legal framework not
only failed to mandate data retention, it even made it illegal.  That's
why most large ISPs and telcos stopped keeping records not strictly
necessary for billing purposes in early 2007.  Previously, storing such
data (for instance, details when an IP address was dynamically assigned
to a particular customer) for about three months was standard industry
practice (and basically everyone with a large customer base did it, so
most consumers were affected).

The new legislation restores the old state of affairs.  The main
difference is that data retention is compulsory instead of optional, and
that the retention period will increase from three to six months (it's
not "up to", it's six months).  It also applies to VoIP services.  The
most controversial change is the requirement to keep mail server logs
for extended periods of time.  (However, the previous data retention
policies of large German email providers are not really public, so it's
hard to tell if it's actually a significant upgrade.)  Other changes
just clarify existing practice by courts, law enforcement, and service
providers.  What might be a bit problematic for some is that the
retained data may only be used to fullfil law enforcement requests; you
cannot use it for spam fighting or marketing purposes.

The whole thing is deemed so sensitive because most German Internet
users subscribe to services that assign IP addresses which change at
least once a day, fueling a strong belief in anonymity on the Internet.

Oh, and all this has got nothing to do with counter-terrorism.