Archive for December, 2005

The errant wars

Friday, December 23rd, 2005 | Personal | No Comments

The dwarves are dead, the elves have isolated themselves from the world, the half-elves and the elves have battled for millennia, the humans have forgotten all but the fear of the elves. In a world of high magic, theocracies, supernatural assassins and ancient feuds we find Michael Poe’s Errant Story.

The errant story tells the story of a young girl Meji who is abnormally lazy and is about to fail her magic studies because she does not pay attention in classes. Fortunately there is an old clause in the school rules that if you manage to blow up the school and all the teachers you pass with honours. So what’s a young girl to do? Well, sipphon off the power of a deity and blow the hell out of the teachers. Sounds like a bad plot out of Hollywood? You wouldn’t be far off. However, despite the shallow initial plot the story and characters actually grow on you as you make your way through the archives.

My judgement? Absolutely recommendable for a nice afternoon of magical stories.

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Let the recording begin

Wednesday, December 14th, 2005 | Personal | No Comments

In my last post It’s a sad day for Europe, I spoke about the European Council trying to fast-track the data retention bill through the Parliament for approval. Well, today was the day of the plenary vote and it was passed with a majority of 387 versus 204. Now the individual member states need to incorporate the bill in their laws and by the turn of the year it should be required most places for ISPs and the likes to store all transaction end-point information for no less than six months and no more than two years (except for exceptions from some member states).

Today the privacy of the individual has been given a devastating blow.

The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either.

– Benjamin Franklin

Sources:

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It’s a sad day for Europe

Saturday, December 3rd, 2005 | Personal | No Comments

Yesterday the ministers of justice in the European Council agreed on their position on the directive of mandatory retention of communications data, as reported on Statewatch. Data retention is no solution has a wiki with further pertinent information on the directive.

With that out of the way, how come an otherwise politically disinterested member of the European Union takes this up on his blog? Why does he have to anyway, haven’t the ministers read Orwell’s 1984? Or perhaps more contemporarily relevant we have Scott Adams’ The Religion War that illustrates what may happen when we push our privacy aside in order to “fight” “terrorism”.

So let us ignore my dysfunctional paranoia for a moment, if you would like to call it that, and look at what is taking place for fighting terrorism in this thing. We have a directive that has been four years under way, that has been sought silently accepted by the council and is being pushed as a fast-track item for approval of non-controversial laws in the parliament later this month, on a first reading. If this law is really that useful for doing societal analysis for the police why not let it stand up to a full scrutiny of a second reading? Why push this hard so the public has almost no time to respond or take notice of it? I consider it more chance than not that I discovered they were actually trying to pass this directive this month already. I am appalled.

So what does this law do anyway? The data rentention law makes it mandatory for all telecommunications and internet service providers to retain all traffic data for no less than six months and no more than two years (four years have been mentioned as well). So what does this mean? It means that your location when you call someone is stored. It means that who you send mails to are stored. It means what websites you visit are stored. A complete blueprint of your interactions with people will be stored, available to the police and other parties that need the data (but more on this in a few seconds). Of course, I might just be pessimistic, but with the many millions of citizens in Europe, how many false-positives will we have? How much invasion of our privacy must we allow in order to ward off terrorists? Will it ward them off at all or will they just invent new and innovative ways to communicate? By accepting these things are we not doing what the terrorists intended in the first place? Giving up our freedoms and accepting a controlled and monitored society in order to lull us into a false sense of security? It saddens me.

The directive states that the data should only be made available in connection to a serious crime or terrorism. So far so good, it has been limited a bit (not enough, but a bit). Now, I live in the EU and I have a vague inkling of an idea about how the EU legislative aspects work, but only a very vague idea. For the uninitiated the member states are allowed to make exemptions to the directives (to some degree that I haven’t figured out yet). It intrigues me to see that some member states have sought not to limit this directive to only serious crime, they want it to be available in connection to any crime at all. This is where the interest organisations for the music industry enter and try in their righteous indignity to have the data available in order to prosecute copyright infringers. Copyright infringers! As if it wasn’t bad enough that we give up our privacy to fight terrorism, we have to give it up so an irrelevant industry fighting for its existential right can extort money from kids whose crime it is to love music and wanting to share it with their friends (yes, I realise there are other aspects to copyright infringement, but let us ignore that for the moment. They’re ignoring our privacy anyway)! The temerity! I am shocked.

So with sadness I sit here and think on the future. No, not sadness, that’s too mild. I sit here looking into the vast decrepit, dystopian future. When I want to talk to someone without being monitored I will have to remember not to use my computer as that leaves a digital trail that will be stored. I shall remember to turn off my cell phone as its location will be tracked (so far only when I make calls, sure, but entertain the thought for a bit). I will have to disappear from the communications grid altogether if I want a confidential conversation with someone. How long until the day where it becomes illegal to do this? You know, in the cause of fighting terrorism. When will I have to register all my friends in order to be allowed to call them, as with Adams’ The Religion War?

Let us hope that this law will not be passed when the parliament convenes between the 12th and the 15th. We do not welcome a new and fascist regime. We value our privacy rights. I will hope, but it seems irrational to me. Frightfully irrational. A sad day for Europe indeed.

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