Damn it, as if we did not have enough worries about being monitored. Legal issues are frequently skirted in the desire to gain more information about Josephine and Joe Average’s habits - spending is already easy to check, now, in Europe at least, they want to track communication patterns.

True, post 9 11 everything has changed. But even the Americans, whose Constitution has perhaps the most safeguards anywhere, through the numerous amendments, refused in their reaction to terrorist acts to allow communications, particularily on the Internet, to be tracked. The idea of Homeland Defense, legislated in the Patriot Act does allow law and order organizations more leeway in tracking the activities of non-Americans. But US citizens, thanks to their Constitution, have their communications freedoms protected - U.S. Legislators rejected efforts to give policing organizations the right to track communication data in the United States.

Mind you, landline telephone calls have been trackable for decades. With a warrant it is possible to wiretap suspects, get access to their calls lists - yet even with the latter it is difficult to get proof about actually who the suspect spoke to. Only the number dialed is concrete. When this concept was applied in Ontario - to wit through cameras monitoring traffic to catch offenders - (red-light runners and speeders) - the public outrage was justified and considerable. A photograph of a license plate does not mean the owner of the vehicle was at the wheel during the alleged infraction. Big Brother thought he could do so, but had to yield to civil rights activists’ pressure.

In late May the European Parliament announced a proposal that would require European countries to retain detailed information on a citizen’s phone and Internet use - for “policing purposes”. The legislation was not passed, but still became semi-official as a directive: The European Communications Data Protection Directive (ECDPD). This is an advisory, more or less, with little legal clout, that nevertheless suggests that the 15 EU member countries keep detailed records of communications - including Internet, fax, phone, e mail and pager data. All in an effort to “thwart future terrorist attacks.”

Never mind, that the mind boggles about the magnitude of this directive. Considering the amount and various forms of communication it would take a massive army of bureaucrats just to get a handle on immediate control. Quite obviously, implementation would be exceedingly costly. Yes, records could be kept, and made available after the fact, but as a preemptive measure it could hardly be useful, much less effective.

In the most basic of terms, this directive, that fortunately did not become a law (but who knows, might someday) would have turned ISPs (Internet Service Providers into SPIES. The initial proposal called for a law requiring ISPs to keep track of communication for an unlimited period of time, “just in case” the data was required by law enforcement authorities.

Orwellian to the nth degree, this directive grew out of George Bush’s October request, when he sent a list of 47 recommendations to the European Parliament that intended to align Europe with the U.S war on terrorism. The list included a suggestion of longer retention of communication data. Since October, Americans, as noted above have dismissed this monitoring internally, but Europe is keen to take up the challenge.

Spain is a case in point. This week the Spanish Senate is slated to vote on a measure that would force Spanish ISPs to keep records of their customers’ Internet activity. It goes without saying that this info is to be made available to authorities in the course of criminal investigation. Failure to do so would incur the obstinate ISP a fine of up to @$500,000 US.

Spaniards are fighting back. Many have joined European Internet users fighting the implementation of the ECDPD at a national, or any other level. (The Euro parliament‘s laws have to be implemented on a national level, giving member countries some leeway). A group called Stop 1984 - named after Orwell’s fictional account of governmental surveillance - is attempting to at least have this directive implemented on a case-to-case basis, instead of on an uniform level. The Spanish Senate is the new Big Brother - El Hermano Grande. Stop 1984 argues, rightfully so, that Internet surfers’ communication behaviour and interests, be they travel plans or sexual orientation and preference are private. Prying government functionaries habe no right to stick their nose there. Prurience be damned, fundamental freedoms are at stake. Phone and pager tracking is also challenged. We know that vast bureaucracies are not secure, are the sources of leaks, and hardly, if ever, accountable for mistaken releases of private data.

The cost is enormous, and - natch - will have to be covered by the ISPs. One Spanish ISP trade group has estimated that it would cost $700,000 US a terabyte to retain the required information. Remember, that people often have many Internet accounts - at work, personal, family, etc. The mind reels - this undertaking is hardly possible.



Perhaps the Spaniards will dodge the bullet. But it will be interesting how the rest of the European countries react in the coming months. And should Estonia - a country almost totally reliant on IT and cell phone usage for its economic success - gain entry into the Union, one wonders how national legislators address this issue. Somewhere, Eric Blair must be wondering, did his warnings about the dangers of government knowing everything about everyone truly go unheard and unheeded?

* End note: While on topics authoritarian and Spanish, it should be pointed out that Fidel Castro is also (still) squashing civil liberties. Last Thursday Castro launched a drive in Cuba that called on Cubans to sign a petition to amend Cuba’s constitution. The amendment would declare Cuba’s economic and political system to be “untouchable”. This was in reaction to President Bush’s demands last week that Cuba open up elections and the economy. Such a petition not only endorses Cuba’s one-party communist system, but flies in the face of any idea of civil liberties. Unnoticed by most of the western press, Castro’s announcement merited only a paragraph or two in the back pages of major papers. From ISPs into spies to “wired communism”, Orwell’s feared state, is not a major reach....*

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