Online campaign against data retention started in Germany

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

On 25 September, the German Working Group against Data Retention
(Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung) started an online campaign
against the mandatory storage of all communications data. Through a
special web portal, concerned citizens can send electronic open letters to
all 448 parliamentarians of the ruling grand coalition and raise their
concern and protest against data retention. The letters are also
anonymized and published on the portal website. There is no pre-defined text
for the letters that the senders have to write themselves, so such a letter
could not be considered spam. The working group is only giving advice on its
main website on how to frame the arguments in the letter.

With this campaign, the working group wants to raise pressure on the
German government and make it postpone the implementation of the EU data
retention directive until a decision has been made by the European Court
of Justice. The Irish government has already challenged the directive in
the ECJ, and EDRi member Digital Rights Ireland is currently preparing a
lawsuit at the Irish constitutional court as well as the ECJ. German
groups are also preparing a court challenge, should the grand coalition
ignore the protests and enact national legislation for data retention.

Reactions for the online campaign are very good. Within the first two
hours after it was reported in the German news ticker heise.de, campaign
supporters already have sent 120 individually formulated letters of
protest.

Stop the data retention ! (only in German)
http://www.stoppt-die-vorratsdatenspeicherung.de

Open Letters against Data Retention (only in German)
http://briefe.gegen.daten.speicherung.eu

Campaign: Open Letters against total logging of telecommunication (only in
German, 25.09.2006)
http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=53&Itemid=27

ENDitorial : Fighting Mass Surveillance (13.06.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.17/enditorial

(Contribution by Ralf Bendrath, EDRi member Netzwerk Neue Medien e.V.,
Germany)