Politech message from Sunday: "E.U. weighs ordering ISPs to retain traffic, with Bush's support" http://www.politechbot.com/p-02779.html --- Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 08:11:27 -0500 To: declanat_private From: Marc Rotenberg <rotenbergat_private> Subject: FYI - NYT on Data Retention, NGO letter http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/technology/13NET.html NEW YORK TIMES November 13, 2001 European Union Set to Vote on Data Law By PAUL MELLER BRUSSELS, Nov. 12 - European Union lawmakers are expected to ignore a request by the Bush administration to revise a data-protection law they are drafting to allow the authorities greater access to information about telephone calls and Internet messages. Last month, President Bush sent a list of 47 measures he wanted Europe to take to assist in the war on terrorism. His requests came in response to an offer of help from the acting president of the European Union, Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium, and Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission, the union's executive branch, during a visit to the White House soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. President Bush asked the union to revise a draft directive on data protection for telecommunications, to be voted on in the European Parliament on Tuesday, "to permit the retention of critical data for a reasonable period," he said in a letter written by James J. Foster, the deputy chief of the United States mission to the union. The existing wording of the directive said that information about times and durations of phone calls and the transmission of e-mail messages should not be retained by telecommunications companies and Internet service providers any longer than necessary for billing purposes. Marjory Van den Broeke, a spokeswoman for the European Parliament, said today that President Bush's request for the revision "was not mentioned once" during a short debate this evening before the vote on Tuesday afternoon. She declined to comment further on the request. She said the European Parliament was expected to move in the opposite direction and strengthen the privacy codes about data retention. The lawmakers have adopted amendments that would limit the circumstances under which data could be kept beyond the required time needed for billing purposes. The draft of the directive written by the European Commission says that retention of data beyond the billing time should be "appropriate." The Parliament members are expected to add that longer data retention should be allowed only where it is "proportionate and limited in time," Ms. Van den Broeke said. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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