The European Parliament appears to be trying to create a regulation to require search engine companies to retain total information about their user’s searches for a period of years. If you are in the EU area, I strongly encourage you to reach out to fight this.

Declaration29: “A group of members of European Parliament is collecting signatures for a Written Declaration that reads: ‘The European Parliament [...] Asks the Council and the Commission to implement Directive 2006/24/EC and extend it to search engines in order to tackle online child pornography and sex offending rapidly and effectively’.

The Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC requires that details on every telephone call, text message, e-mail and Internet connection be recorded for months, for the entire population, in the absence of any suspicion. As to what is wrong with data retention please refer to DRletter. The Written Declaration even wants to extend data retention to search engines, meaning that your search terms could be tracked for months back.

The proposed declaration has been signed by 371 MEPs (list of names here) – and thus reached the 368 members needed to pass it. Many MEPs signed because of the title of the document (‘setting up a European early warning system (EWS) for paedophiles and sex offenders’), not knowing that they are endorsing blanket data retention as well. More than 30 MEPs decided to withdraw their signature, one even on the day of adoption.”

Apparently the legislators in Louisiana feel that crimes committed with an electronic map are much more serious than those committed with the aid of paper maps. Not just some of them, the vote in the Louisiana House approved it unanimously (89-0).

If a “virtual street-level map” is used in the commission of ordinary crimes, a mandatory additional year must be added to the sentence. In cases of terrorism, the penalty is 10 years.

This should prove a boon to the sellers of Thomas Bros. high resolution map books.

The unanimous nature of this decision makes it clear the degree to which our leaders lack any political spine. They are obviously concerned that voting against this will appear “soft on crime” despite the fact that this will have no real impact at all, and is trivial to circumvent. It is a waste of time and attention on what Bruce Schneier calls “Security Theater”.