Data Retention on the Internet
January 1st 2009 will be the deadline: according to European Union (EU) Directive 2006/24/EU, all telecommunications operators and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in EU will have to retain email and telephone connection data of their customers and users for up to two years. This means that data about every citizen's communication is retained without a specific reason. The very act of communication will become suspicious.
On Friday 19 September, the Center for Media and Communication Studies (CMCS) at Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, in collaboration with the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and European Digital Rights (EDRI), will bring together scholars, lawyers, policy experts, communication rights advocates, media professionals and ICT activists from all over Europe to analyze the new regulation and to develop strategies for maintaining and enhancing privacy and free communication.
The workshop "Data Retention on the Internet: Challenges for small, alternative and citizen-based Internet Service Providers" will focus on the implications for non-commercial and civil society-based ISPs, for whom data retention requirements pose existential problems. They would be forced to compromise on their most fundamental objective - protecting their users' privacy from state and corporate data gathering - and become an integral part of surveillance operations. The workshop will be the first to bring together members of non-commercial ISPs from different countries and backgrounds to learn about the new policy environment and discuss their concerns.
The meeting comes at a time when most EU member states are finalizing the implementation of the EU Directive, but also resistance is spreading. In several states civil rights groups have launched legal complaints and law suits, demonstrations have taken place and coordinated protest actions are planned for 11 October all over Europe. The Budapest workshop will serve to discuss the prospects of legal challenges with protagonists of lawsuits in different countries, to review campaigns against surveillance and to explore the technological options of safeguarding privacy and anonymity.
A focus will lie on the Central/Eastern European region and the challenges to privacy in a region with a particular history of privacy infringements. However workshop participants will also look beyond Europe and hear about data retention practices in other parts of the world.
The workshop will kick-start a weekend of meetings by digital rights advocates, media activists and non-commercial ISPs to develop a specific and coordinated civil society response to data retention policies as well as a strategy of how to maximise privacy protection despite data retention obligations.
Further reading:
APC: EU directive paints alternative ISPs black
Statewatch Observatory: The surveillance of telecommunications in the EU
Freedom Not Fear - European Day of Action 11 October 2008
Oliver Leistert: Data Retention in the European Union: When a Call Returns