Maybe you've heard about the British documentary '
Suspect Nation (google video)' which shows how the UK government changed civil liberties laws in the last years to turn UK citizens into suspects, where every step people are doing is being watched and recorded.
It's shocking what's going on there on that isle (
Airstrip one, anyone?) But to be honest, that's not my problem. I live in Austria and have nothing to do with that. Right?
Wrong. The problem is that last year, the EU has created the
EU Directive 2006/24/EG which now forces every state of the EU to spy on its citizens. Ireland has started a nullity suit against this, but other countries like
Germany and
Austria are already implementing that directive. How are they going to spy on us? Just like this: For at least six months, they'll store with whom, how long and when you communicated with someone, regardless of the type of communication: email, fixed network, cellular calls, SMS as well as internet phoning. For cellular phones and SMS, they also store where you've been. Anonymizers will be forbidden. So basically, in a country like Austria where fixed network is dead and every austrian has an average of 1.08 cellular phones currently, they can look up what you've done during the last six months. And that's just the minimum requirement for the EU directive, every country may decide to store more data about you, like the websites you've been visiting.
In a constitutional state, they have no right to do this. In a constitutional state, you have a right for privacy. It's not ok that any f*cking fat civil servant may take a look at what I did during the last 6 months. And that's just the beginning, don't think they'll stop there, as statements of some german politicans reveal. And what's even more shocking: I feel like at least in this country, nobody is doing anything against this. In Germany,
some small resistance is starting up. But what's with Austria? And the rest of Europe? If you talk to people and ask them about it, they've not even heard about this! WTF. If we don't stop those politicans, we'll soon have something like the
Stasi, the secret police of East Germany. So let's do something against it. If you don't know what, maybe you could start with a
Stasi 2.0 T-Shirt (german link).
Brian C. Ladd