Jun 10 2008
EU court date for Irish data retention case
Looks like July 1 will be the day the EU hears the Irish government's confusing case on data retention. Yes, you'd think the case protesting the imposition of the recent EU directive to add email and net use to the retention list would be about the actual retention. But no: ironically, it's about how the directive was imposed, a technicality. The Irish government is the EU's tarty cheerleader on behalf of these intrusive, overreaching and obnoxious policies and is more than happy to impose them, in the case of phone call data, without any restrictions on access, and in the case of the new directive, with stipulations that redefine 'serious crime' from offenses with a minimum 5 year sentence to an offense with a maximum 6 month sentence -- like being drunk in public, or refusing to move on at the request of a garda.
The sudden arrival of the court date however means that the EU court will not also hear at the same time, the separate action by Digital Rights Ireland against the Irish government for the imposition of data retention generally, which is expected to be sent on to the EU. The DRI case looks like it will also be heard in in Ireland in July so if it gets sent to Europe, it will be heard on its own, it appears.
DRI chairman TJ McIntyre had an opinion piece recently in the Irish Times on the problem with data retention which discusses the issue.
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[...] perhaps, their US counterparts] are on the side of the angels advocating against it, whilst Karlin Lillington fills us in on the current state of Digital Rights Ireland’s campaign and litigation against [...]