Big Brother Society - Eu Directive Allows Authorities to Know Where You Were and Who You Talked to for Up to 2 Years

Big Brother Society



European Union wants to introduce the directive of data storage. What will this mean for you?



The directive of data storage gives the authorities the chance to demand to store information about tele logs, net traffic logs and much more for a minimum period of 6 months, but no longer than 2 years.



As it is today the telecom companies takes care of the information they need for invoicing and in addition some logs for access to the network.



These logs are normally stored for a period of 3-5 months time dependent upon the subscription type. Cash card subscription does not need any invoice information storage and therefore the information stored is not large or not stored at all.



With the new directive of data storage the amount of information that will be stored will be tremendous, to also contain information about where any cell phone is at any given time, and what internet sites visited and more than this.



Normally no individual will notice anything different, however some authorities dealing with te privacy act, does not agree totally with this statement.



Even yourself will not remember who you talked to on the cell phone last week, or where you were at any given time last week. The authorities will now know this better than yourself. They will have information about where you were, who you were with and who you talked to, up to two years time from the moment you interacted with someone, or just werer you were with your cell phone.



The data stored will be used by police in investigations and comes as a result of te terror attacks in London last year. The goal with this directive is to streamline the European security policy. And we will see more of this type of data used in investigative purposes, and we have to wonder if it is enough to weigh against the negative aspects of these kind of directives.



The police authorities needs to investigate criminals and not any law obedient citizen. A complete surveillance of all citizens over a longer period such as up to two years will begin to look like Big Brother Society which Orson Wells in his book wrote about long time ago. Maybe his vision was not so far from the truth to come?



The case surrounding this directive has not been touched much in the media, but strong feelings are risen amongst those engaged in this matter. The privacy act and the danger of misuse of such surveillance data are key words amongst those advocating against this directive.

One of the major concerns is the security of these data stored around on various servers around in Europe. Especially we have seen this lately in the UK where less careful handling of data has led to exposure of highly confidential and private information in to the public. You can ask yourself, what if it comes into criminal hands?



More and more data is stored about people around in the world, and one of the areas have been how secure our medical records have been handled and stored. We have seen several occasions around the world how easy it is to get access to or that data has been exposed to the public.



What about false positive indications during an investigation leading to suspects amongst innocent people? Wireless connections makes misuse of the connection by people an issue. So if someone taps into your wireless connection, suddenly you can become a suspect if some traffic during this illegal tapping was found to fit a pattern during the investigation. Then you are in focus since you own this wireless connection which has been tapped into.



The criminals will find ways to make this a hiding place and will find methods to create innocent victims since the storage of traffic data is to be used more and more in criminal investigations.



Unregistered cash cards becomes more and more obsolete in most countries, however, identity theft is still happening and there are already cases seen were criminals utilize this loop hole to create innocent victims as part of their activities.



Maybe there is a need for more tools in a modern technology world in order to catch the criminal, however the act of privacy has to be ensured, and loopholes to be tightened before any directive gives a chance for criminals to create innocent victims and lead the investigators down the wrong path during its pursuit of criminals.