The EU want to keep a record of every internet search

As reported on the Register, more than 300 MEPs in the European Parliament are set to lobby the EU to keep a log of every internet search made in Europe, under the dubious logic of cracking-down on paedophilia:

They have signed a written declaration urging that the European Data Retention Directive - which mandates that ISPs should retain basic session data for up to two years - is extended to cover web search providers..

Written declarations are the European Parliament's equivalent of the the Commons' Early Day Motion system, whereby MPs sign up to causes in the hope of drawing attention to or action on their cause.

Sponsored by Italian MEP Tiziano Motti and Slovak MEP Anna Záborská, written declaration 29 (pdf) is close to being adopted by the Parliament. It has 324 of of the requisite 369 MEPs' signatures.

If 369 MEPs do sign the declaration it will have no legal affect, but will be sent to the European Commission for consideration.

There can be no doubt: monitoring every internet search is a completely unjustifiable and disproportionate intrusion on our privacy.

The MEPs responsible for proposing this law under the guise of preventing paedophilia should be ashamed of themselves for exploiting such an emotive issue in this way.

With Data Retention Directive already in place, this latest move suggests that the EU Parliament is intent on controlling what we look at on the internet.

The full declaration is available online here: http://smile29.eu/doc/DS29_EN.pdf

By Dylan Sharpe 

Comments

[Andrew Ampers Taylor]

No problem,

Will every reader of this site - if this comes to pass - search the Internet and Google the following:

Which European Commissioners are engaged in Paedophilia?

Or words to that effect.

The Paedophilia word will catch that up and have the police examine the email.

If a few million Europeans Google that once a day, but changing the words ever so slightly every time, Maybe change Commissioners to MEPs etc etc then they might give this one up for good.

Ampers

[Redacted]

I doubt it will inconvenience many paedophiles. I would think they are using stealth already.

But of course I understand that "paedophiles" is just the standard "bogey-man-word" that's routinely used as a pre-emptive bulwark against objections to the plans of the totalitarian juggernaut.

In the end, the Internet may become so poisoned with snoops and criminals that disconnection will become the cool option. For some time already I have been advising people who aren't on it yet to stay well away.

[Slacker]

If it does happen then at least we can screw up the results by using stuff like the trackmenot plugin for Firefox.

http://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/

It sends random searches to Google and other search engines to hide your own queries in a cloud of 'noise'. It runs in the background and doesn't affect your surfing or use much bandwidth. If we all do this it would royally stuff up Google's current massive data-gathering exercise, as well as anything proposed by the EU.

[Purlieu]

There's more to life than Google ...
Yahoo, Altavista, Bing, etc etc

[Purlieu]

Do they have evidence that paedophiles use internet search a lot for their, erm, activities ?
Only the stupid ones, I'll wager.

[[email protected]]

"European Data Retention Directive - which mandates that ISPs should retain basic session data for up to two years"

That is already far too intrusive.

[Slacker]

> There's more to life than Google ...
Yahoo, Altavista, Bing, etc etc

Which search engine do you use then?