Paedo-Fear Pushes The Surveillance Agenda

It’s a bit of a surprise, given the European Commission’s very public battle with Google about privacy, to find Europe’s Parliament is mulling a proposal to demand that Google retain even more personal data. But it appears that some MEPs are using fear of paedophiles to stoke up a bid to enlist Google in a greater incursion into privacy.

The European Commission has had issues with Google over privacy for some time, and Commissioner Reding asked Google to come clean about the Wi-Fi data it accidentally snooped. Google has started to comply, and plans to hand over data to the French and German authorities.

So, it’s surprising to find a large number of members of the European Parliament – who set policy at least in theory – have signed up to a motion which would actually increase the amount of data Google would have to keep, and force it to share that data.

Fear of paedophilia drives support

Three hundred and twenty-four MEPs have signed a declaration calling for search engine companies to retain data, which could then be passed to law enforcement agencies, to provide what it calls “an early warning system for paedophiles and sex offenders”.

The declaration, from MEPs Tiziano Motti and Anna Záborská, asks for search engines to be added to the Data Retention Directive (2006/24/EC) which demands that service providers log user activity so it can be investigated by law enforcement bodies.

If it gets 369 signatories, the European Commission must consider the proposal, but it is very short on any explanation: it’s not clear who would read through the logs, or what kind of questionable search behaviour would provide evidence of a nascent sex criminal. So most observers are not up in arms about the potential threat to privacy.

As you would expect, the Pirate Party’s MEP, Christian Engström, has a view on it in a blog post, which urges MEPs who signed to read the proposal and think again. He believes most have been suckered into signing by some manipulative marketing, for instance on the site smile29.eu, which Engström says uses “an emotionally loaded picture of a child” and a tasteless address: “Whether we are talking about sexual abuse of children or the introduction of mass surveillance, I don’t think it’s anything to smile about.”

Liberal MEP Cecilia Wikström says in an open letter that she was misled into signing the declaration, which does not mention the Data Retention Directive by name, only by number.

Elected representatives – a danger?

If nothing else, it illustrates a common problem in almost all elected assemblies – a plain lack of proper understanding of technology-related issues. It’s often cited in the UK that not enough MPs actually understand the implications of the technology issues they are supposed to decide on, and emotive requests like this can produce a knee-jerk and very wrong result.

For this reason, campaigners and technology-literate MEPs like Mr Engström have to spend an inordinate amount of time preventing simple obvious mistakes made by elected members who want to be seen to be “doing something” but don’t really understand the issues.

For instance, only a huge effort from concerned people prevented Europe from adopting software patents under the pressure of lobbying from big self-interested software companies. And only continued vigilance will prevent those big companies from wearing down resistance.

In the UK a big campaign against the excessive measures of the Digital Economy Act has had some effect in tempering the eventual implementation as prpoposed by Ofcom, but it didn’t kill it, because in the end most elected representatives simply don’t get it, and let it pass in the rush before the end of the parliamentary session.

The only consoloation may be that MEPs and MPs are now more accessible than ever before – with even the less technology-able provided with email addresses.

We all have a responsibility to first understand the issues, and second educate our representatives. It’s a tedious responsibility of course, as MPs aren’t the kind of people you normally want to enter into a long discussion with.

But someone has to do it, or we will all live with the consequences.