Civil liberties groups from 11 countries ask EU to annul mass surveillance of Europeans
Glyn sez, "43 civil liberties NGOs and professional associations based in 11 European countries today submitting a brief to the European Court of Justice.The amicus brief asks the Court to annul an EU directive ordering the blanket registration of telecommunications and location data of 494 million Europeans.
As the document lays out, data retention violates the right to respect for private life and correspondence, freedom of expression and the right of providers to the protection of their property:"
"While it threatens to inflict great damage on society, its potential benefit appears, overall, to be little. Data retention can support the protection of individual rights only in few and generally less important cases. A permanent, negative effect on crime levels is not to be expected... [With data retention in place] citizens constantly need to fear that their communications data may at some point lead to false incrimination or governmental or private abuse of the data. Because of this, traffic data retention endangers open communication in the whole of society."Link (Thanks, Glyn!)
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Wow, this is really good news. And it gives me the perfect opportunity to pimp some favourite freedom-fighter type organisations! Join up today and you too could get this warm glowing sense of self-righteousness and civic duty discharged! [1]
Liberty (Director - born star Shami Chakrabarti, but they don't seem to have membership commensurate with the fantastic work they do)
No2ID - the clue's in the name
Open Rights Group
[1] As a card-carrying Liberal Democrat - yes, my American friends, that really is the name of the UK's 3rd party - the only warm glow I have is liberal guilt; but the principle is sound, I believe :)