to allow government surveillance in the late '90s during the Clinton administration. This is one of many issues that Hillary needs to be asked about.
WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe
European parliament approves anti-privacy laws
By Mike Ingram
11 June 2002
. . .
In a vote last week the European parliament approved measures that will allow the 15 member states of the European Union to force telephone and Internet companies to retain detailed logs of their customers’ communications for an unspecified period. The security services and the police can then access these records, which are presently kept for only a couple of months for billing purposes before being destroyed. The law will be formally adopted by EU governments within a few months and implemented by the end of 2003.
Although police will still require a warrant to intercept the content of electronic communications, the new legislation means that they will be able to build up a complete picture of an individual’s personal communications, including who they have emailed or phoned and when, and which Internet sites they have visited. With access to mobile phone records police will also be able to map a person’s movements because the phones communicate with the nearest base station every few seconds. In urban areas, the information is accurate to within hundreds of metres. With the next generation of mobiles, accuracy will increase to within a few metres.
. . .
In fact the British legislation has nothing to do with September 11 and was on the cards since April 2000. This was confirmed in a document written by the National Crime Intelligence Service on behalf of the government’s main electronic surveillance centre, GCHQ, and other agencies, which was leaked in December 2000. With the tragic events of September 11 came an ideal opportunity to push through the planned legislation.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/priv-j11.shtmlStill, Europeans have a little more privacy protection at work than do Americans: (This is from the World Socialist Website, which I would not normally cite -- however, I think this information is confirmed at
http://www.legi-internet.ro/index.php/Copland_vs_United_Kingdom_EC/278/0/?&L=2 and there are other articles about it on the internet. I quote this article because it is very readable.)
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) recently decided Copland v. United Kingdom,<1> in which the ECHR expanded the basis and extent of protection for personal data in a variety of settings, including the workplace. The European Union’s Data Protection Directive already mandated very broad protection for such data in EU member states. This decision may further widen the gulf between U.S. and European data protection laws and create challenges for multinational businesses and other organizations operating in Europe. This Insight describes the case and considers the implications of this international legal ruling.
. . .
Copland involved a complaint by Lynette Copland, the personal assistant to the principal of Carmarthenshire College in the United Kingdom. Copland alleged that the College’s deputy principal monitored her e-mail and telephone conversations to discover whether she was making improper use of College facilities for personal purposes.
. . .
The ECHR found that, on these facts, the monitoring violated Article 8 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Convention), which provides that “Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.”<4>
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/priv-j11.shtml
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