The EP approved the data retention directive, with amendments laid down by EPP and PES. This is a dark day for the Union and the liberty of Europeans. I suggest that all those who voted for these parties will think both once and twice when the next parliamentary election is held.
The directive will call for retention of data under a period between six moths and two years. A monitoring organisation such as this has not been seen since the fall of the Berlin wall.
What is life without liberty I ask. What is the next step in this horrifying spiral? When will people wake up from their dream and finally realise that liberties that we take for granted are being eliminated one by one?
I for one am extremelly displeased with the ongoing development, a sad day indeed.
5 comments:
I came across this comment on slashdot:
This is interesting. Many years ago (in the 1930's) European countries did in fact used to maintain call records. This was primarily for business purposes.
Then came World War Two. As the German Army overcame and occupied Allied countries, they immediately headed for the Post & Telecommunications (or Telegraph) offices. This was to sieze the call records maintained there. They then looked up call records for known Allied agents and sympathizers, Jews and other groups. They used these call records to discover who was talking to whom and went to investigate and/or arrest people who might also be agents/Jews/Etc., or collaborators. These people were then sent to prison, or worse.
After the war, Western European countries decided not to keep call records any longer and instead moved to a metered system. This prevented a reccurance of the bad situation they found themselves in while occupied.
Now these records have been reinstated, in a blatent case of not learning from earlier mistakes. It seems the phrase "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it" has once again been demonstrated.
Så, känner du verkligen för att vara kvar i EU nu?
Med tanke på dels det här..
It's not a matter of beeing a member of the Union or not. There are many faults with it, that's true, but the question is similar to whether or not I want Täby to be a municipality in Sweden just because some funky politics is carried out by the national parliament.
The problem in this case however is that the council forced the parliament into this, the council would have carried on in the third pillar had the law been overthrown by the parliament. The PES and the EPP-ED at least managed to amend the proposal, though they completelly ignored the LIBE group's proposed amendments.
I personally think that it would have been better if the council had run over the parliament as we would then finally have a BIG public debate on the democratic legitimacy of the council.
Also, the main proponent of this directive was the faschistoidic Swedish minister of justice Bodström, and he would probably have introduced this law on the national level, should it have failed on the federal level.
Du är skogstokig! Man måste ju bara skicka en virtuell kram till dig. Hoppas att du har det bra uppe i Sälen.
A vote against PN (EPP party in Malta) would mean a vote for Labour and a vote against democracy. So no I won't follow your advice!
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