back to article Euro Parliament: Time to rethink DRIP, other snoop laws

Blanket data retention is illegal - or that's the unvarnished view of the legal department of the European Parliament at least. Last year, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the EU’s own Data Retention Directive, a law that required telco service providers to store information about their customers’ activity, …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Fat chance

    I would suggest that the ongoing unpleasantness in France (which may yet trigger similar outrages elsewhere in Europe) will be used by security services as grounds to get their national governments to tell the EU commission to go swing. And that will occur whether data retention has any relevance or not to the sad events in France or not.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Re: whether data retention has any relevance or not...

      Well... these three gun-toting a-holes already were under surveillance according to the French media ...

      (And what a fat lot of good that did...)

    2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: Fat chance

      There will certainly be calls for more Big Brother action but there is now evidence (on top of the small matter of legality) that all the snooping does is cost money.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    > ...should be proportional to the security threat.

    This is a simplistic assertion and takes no account of the efficacy of general public surveillance which as any fool knows is pretty low.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's sad that neither scientific fact nor common sense seem to be a deciding factor in what surveillance laws we end up lumbered with. It seems the laws we get are simply the ones that cause the biggest headlines.

    I'm sure this recent band of nut-jobs in France and Australia will cause a knee jerk reaction of some kind. Which will no doubt result in more stupid laws and, if we can make up an excuse for it, a war.

    What I really find surprising though is how few attacks there are. I would assume that any "terrorist atrocity" that kills someone in the west makes it into the news. What that means is that on an average day there's probably close to 1,000,000,000 people all living together happily and not blowing each other up because God told them too. That's impressive.

    Anyway, having said that it's good to hear that there are still a few people high up that have a grip on reality and are willing to say it out loud.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      > What I really find surprising though is how few attacks there are. I would assume that any "terrorist atrocity" that kills someone in the west makes it into the news.

      I agree with most of what you say.

      However, the fact that there are so few attacks doesn't strike me as odd at all.

      We are social creatures to our very core. It is innate in us to abhor the murder of another individual almost as much as we abhor killing ourselves. If it were not so, then our race would have died out eons ago.

      It takes religious fervour and intense brain washing to impel someone to commit such a heinous act against their own species.

      Premeditated murder is hard and thank ${DEITY} it is.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "It takes religious fervour and intense brain washing to impel someone to commit such a heinous act against their own species."

        Unfortunately you can override that restriction by getting people to think of a group of people as "inferior" and "other". Political and religious leaders, demagogues, and the media can cultivate these ideas until enough people absorb them as "the norm". Then social conformity, tribal instincts, self-protection, and vested self-interests will trigger a more persistent version of "mob rule".

        There have been many murderous "witch hunts" in British history. Apart from the literal ones - there was the mob violence against English businesses with German sounding names in 1914. In the last year or so there was the innocent Bristol man murdered in public view - with the apparently open acquiescence of the neighbourhood saying they were "protecting their children".

        Like some dog breeds are genetically disposed to aggressive behaviour - then apparently so are some humans. All that is needed is to find the motivator and trigger.

        One of our school teachers in the 1950s was truly sadistic - being both verbally and physically abusive over trifles. Apparently he had been in the Commandos during the war. Another teacher with benign manners had been a submariner - an environment where a sanguine personality was an asset. One wonders if the sadistic teacher would have been selected as a commando if he didn't possess an intrinsic violent streak.

        1. Andrew Meredith

          >>One wonders if the sadistic teacher would have been selected as a commando if he didn't possess an intrinsic violent streak<<

          Having been raised where I was, I know and have known a quite large number of commando and special forces folks. *None* of them were violent nut jobs. In order to do what they did, they needed the sort of sanguine calm demeanour you describe for the submariner. I guess your old teacher was the exception.

          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            "Having been raised where I was, I know and have known a quite large number of commando and special forces folks. *None* of them were violent nut jobs. In order to do what they did, they needed the sort of sanguine calm demeanour you describe for the submariner. I guess your old teacher was the exception."

            I grew up around SpecOps people too. And I too would describe them as calm. But I would never ascribe to them the demeanor of a submariner, which is far more akin to that of a soldier in a foxhole. A submariner, like a solider in a foxhole, fights for the man to the left of him, and the man to the right of him. This is not at all what motivates the special forces commando. For that, you need a little bit of Firefly:

            The Operative: I'm sorry. If your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to. You should have taken my offer. Or did you think none of this was your fault?

            Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: I don't murder children.

            The Operative: I do. If I have to.

            Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Why? Do you even know why they sent you?

            The Operative: It's not my place to ask. I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin.

            Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: So me and mine gotta lay down and die... so you can live in your better world?

            The Operative: I'm not going to live there. There's no place for me there... any more than there is for you. Malcolm... I'm a monster.What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I'm also surprised by the scarcity of attacks given the efforts to produce terrorists by the west. Leaving aside 'friendly droning'; which -conceivably- could be an accident; there's no fucking excuse whatsoever for shit like this:

      http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/12/06/368452888/q-a-j-is-for-jihad

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