IN the last few days Britain has enacted a new ‘Big Brother’ EU directive which allows the Government to monitor all internet traffic by the public for the next 12 months, and the same directive is about to come into force here.
The legislation requires internet service providers to archive all email traffic — the identities of the sender and receiver, but not the contents of the messages — as well as recording broadband telephone calls. Information about every website visited by any computer user is also stored.
Authorities where the legislation is enacted will be able to access the stored records with a warrant.
Internet service providers and telecoms firms have resisted the proposals, while some countries in the EU are contesting the directive. Sweden, which is very protective of privacy, is understood to be ignoring the rule completely. There is a challenge going through the German courts at present.
However, Ireland seems prepared to bring it into force. When contacted the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources confirmed the EU directive has not yet been enacted but that the Department of Justice was currently drafting the necessary legislation.
The logistics and cost of storing all the information will be huge. As Yahoo pointed out: "A report dating back to 2004 estimated that a single, large ISP in Britain would need up to 40 million gigabytes of storage capacity to store the traffic data from a year of user activity. Even in 2009 that kind of storage doesn’t come cheap, nor does the challenge of managing it all come easy."
Governments that have introduced the controversial monitoring have defended its use.
The British Home Office said it was implementing the directive because it was the Government’s priority to "protect public safety and national security".
It said communications data plays a vital part in a wide range of criminal investigations and prevention of terrorist attacks, as well as contributing to public safety more generally.
However, civil liberties and privacy advocates are not happy. Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, told the Daily Telegraph: "I don’t think people are aware of the implications of this move. It means that everything we do online or on the phone will be known to the authorities.
"They are using this to produce probably the world’s most comprehensive surveillance system.
"This is a disgraceful example of the covert influence that Brussels has across our freedoms and liberties. The entire episode has been marked by a litany of secret dealings, vicious political games and a complete absence of transparency."
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Saturday, April 11, 2009
