Some stuff on today’s protest on the data retention

by Vasil Kolev

We were too few. Everyone has noticed it, a lot of people are worried. The ones that should worry are the ones on the other side – the ones not protesting are thinking something else. I doubt it’s something nice. We’re trying to make a civil society, but it’s not working – there’s nobody listening on the other side. Maybe we’re not shouting in the right way.

The directive is strange. Nobody has yet explained me clearly what’s meant by “passive terminal” (there are a few ides, but nobody is sure), no clarity what has to be tracked (other than email), and I’d like a comprehensive list of companies that are affected by it (is marla affected, for example?).

The point of the directive is missing. Can someone pull stats how often such data was used by the institutions, how often were they useful and how many convictions were they responsible for (and until now there was the normal way for requesting that kind of data).

Also, I really want someone to show that there are technically competent people in these institutions. Because I still haven’t seen any…

What’s the penalty if I don’t give the information? That’s not really clear either. We can make a fund “stupidity” for the moment when such data is requested, just to pay the fines.

Looks like it’s time for a lecture on “privacy, cryptography and such like in our Internet”. The bad guys already know this, someone will have to explain it to the normal people too.

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