The U.K. may be preparing to broaden Internet traffic data retention powers to include social networks, online gaming chat rooms and Skype, as well as real-time monitoring. The plan, expected to be announced next month in the Queen’s Speech, aims to maintain continued availability of communications data as technology changes, the Home Office said. But privacy advocates said the proposal, which was proposed several years ago by the Labor government and then scrapped due to strong opposition, would put the U.K. in the same surveillance league as China and Iran. Moreover, said one, it could be a back-stop if the European Commission decides to make major changes to the controversial EU data retention directive, which is currently under review.
Dugie Standeford
Dugie Standeford, European Correspondent, Communications Daily and Privacy Daily, is a former lawyer. She joined Warren Communications News in 2000 to report on internet policy and regulation. In 2003 she moved to the U.K. and since then has covered European telecommunications issues. She previously covered the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and intellectual property law matters. She has a degree in psychology from Duke University and a law degree from the University of Tulsa College of Law.
EU governments and lawmakers tentatively cut a deal to reduce mobile roaming charges, the Council of Ministers, European Parliament and European Commission said Wednesday. The compromise, which was endorsed by the council’s Permanent Representatives Committee, must be formally approved by Parliament and the council. They said that’s expected to happen, respectively, in May and June. The exact language wasn’t available Wednesday. Competitive telcos welcomed the agreement, but mobile operators said its price caps are unreasonable.
A European Commission roadmap for the future of satellite navigation system Galileo and the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System (EGNOS) began moving through the European Parliament Wednesday. Lawmakers in the Industry, Research and Energy Committee said they're generally enthusiastic about the programs, which are seen as a way to boost European growth, competitiveness and clout, but they remain wary about the cost overruns that have plagued Galileo. Questions about financing and governance remain, they said.
BRUSSELS -- Spectrum regulators and users must rethink spectrum allocation in order to make white spaces and other shared uses possible, speakers said Wednesday at a Forum Europe conference on an EU policy for dynamic spectrum access. Cognitive technologies will squeeze more out of radio spectrum, but in practice “we're a long way” from having them, said moderator and Aetha Consulting partner Amit Nagpal. Despite successful white spaces trials in the U.S. and U.K., the regulatory issues for dynamic shared access are far from resolved, regulators and industry representatives said.
Ignoring calls by Vodafone for a moratorium on mobile roaming regulation, the European Parliament Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) Committee on Tuesday backed European Commission-proposed rules intended to cap data roaming charges, cut costs for calls and texts, and let consumers buy cross-border roaming services from suppliers outside their home countries. The legislative report, authored by Angelika Niebler of Germany and the European People’s Party, sets lower retail price caps than the EC, aiming for a rate of euro 0.15 ($0.20) per minute for outgoing voice calls; euro 0.05 per minute for incoming voice calls; euro 0.05 per text message; and euro 0.20 per megabyte for data roaming, starting in July 2014. The report recommends requiring mobile operators to offer roaming services separate from domestic contracts beginning in March 2014. Home providers will have to notify customers of that right and switching to an alternative provider must be free. Domestic mobile operators will have to allow customers to access mobile local data services temporarily while abroad, akin to using a Wi-Fi hotspot, without having to unsubscribe from their existing data roaming contract or arrangement and while keeping their mobile number, the report said. Independent mobile virtual network operators complained earlier this month that the low ceilings proposed by lawmakers will squeeze them out of the mobile roaming market (CD Feb 9 p15). The new rules could see plenary action in April, the committee said. Tuesday’s vote was “another stepping stone towards better protection against excessive roaming charges in the EU,” said European Consumers’ Organization Director General Monique Goyens. “But we haven’t crossed the finish line yet.” While roaming calls and SMS costs are being driven down, “we should not see a lava lamp effect” where prices are hiked elsewhere, such as for data or national calls, she said. Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes meanwhile slammed Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao for saying, at the 2012 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Monday, that there should be a regulatory moratorium on roaming ceilings. Colao warned that unless the EU stops imposing prices cuts, mobile companies will slash investment in networks, The Guardian reported. Moves to regulate roaming charges are creating a “heaven or a hell scenario,” Colao was quoted as saying. The hell scenario is operators losing hundreds of millions in revenue to mobile termination rates and reducing their spending on networks, jettisoning jobs in the telecom, media, entertainment and applications-development sectors, he said. “Message to Vittorio and Vodafone: I call your bluff, and indeed do not respond well to threats,” Kroes said. The EC is on the side of Vodafone’s customers, she said, reminding the company that it’s also trying to get the mobile industry more spectrum and a bigger market.
Europe and the U.S. should be thinking about a “transatlantic digital marketplace” instead of getting “hung up on our small differences,” U.S. Ambassador to the EU William Kennard, a former FCC chairman, said Monday at a Copenhagen EU Danish Presidency high level conference on the digital single market. He cited a book by Peter Baldwin, “The Narcissism of Minor Differences,” that describes the psychological tendency people have to seize on small differences and enlarge them, saying that although the EU and U.S. are the world’s largest trading partners, they get stuck on issues such as data privacy that are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. As Europe debates its digital single market and the U.S. updates its online rules, they should consider joining forces because China, Brazil, Russia and other countries aren’t going to wait for them to resolve their differences, he said on a webcast.
In a move that may up-end EU laws mandating storage of Internet and telephony traffic data, the German Constitutional Court Friday tossed out several provisions requiring telecom providers to retain customers’ personal data, Bingham McCutchen telecommunications lawyer Axel Spies said. The high court upheld rules ordering service providers to collect and store assigned telecommunications numbers such as phone and mobile terminal numbers and associated subscriber personal information such as names and birth dates, he said. That means selling prepaid services and numbers for cellphones to end users who use them anonymously remains prohibited, he said. The court also upheld a section on eavesdropping and data collection by law enforcement agencies via interfaces and other automated means, he said. However, it criticized storage of Internet Protocol addresses, which contain more information and potential identifiers and must be treated with more legal care than “mere telephone numbers,” he said. But one section, which governs how telecom companies provide the information to law enforcement manually, by sifting through the records, was found unconstitutional, he said. In particular, making providers hand over any information on access security codes such as passwords or personal identification numbers was found to breach the right to informational self-determination enshrined in the national constitution, he said. But the rule will stay in place temporarily until June 30, 2013, at the latest as long as the safety codes are collected and used only under the conditions and to the extent explicitly foreseen by applicable law enforcement measures, he said. “This is an important decision” that will take time to digest, Spies told us. It will have an impact on the wider debate in Germany on to what extent telecom providers must store all traffic data for law enforcement purposes under the EU data retention directive, he said. Large portions of the country’s adaptation of the EU measure were voided in 2010, such as the requirement to hold traffic data for six months, and the government hasn’t been able to put new rules in place despite pressure from police bodies, he said. “My impression is that this new decision will make it difficult to fully implement the data retention directive in Germany,” he said. A “quick freeze” system to accommodate the needs of law enforcement agencies, akin to that in the U.S., has become more likely, he said. Asked how, if Germany is unable to fully adopt the EU measure, the European Commission can expect other European governments to do so, Spies said: “This is part of the struggle between national constitutional law and EU law.” The EC is expected to unveil plans to revamp the directive this year.
Online social networks can’t be forced to monitor users to prevent piracy, the European Court of Justice said in a major ruling Thursday. Requiring hosting providers to install a general filtering system would violate the rule that there be a fair balance between protecting copyright and the freedom to conduct business, safeguard personal data and receive information, the high court said. The decision should make EU bodies and national governments think twice about attempting to make private companies responsible for copyright breaches in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and upcoming revisions to the intellectual property rights enforcement directive, digital rights activists said.
Without “substantial and radical changes,” mobile roaming reforms floated by EU lawmakers will be a huge failure, a representative for independent mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) said Wednesday at a European People’s Party hearing in Brussels. The event, chaired by the author of the draft legislative response to European Commission plans to force down high data roaming costs, looked at proposed price caps and “structural measures” such as “decoupling” of domestic from roaming contracts and giving alternative providers access to networks in other EU countries at regulated wholesale tariffs. MVNOs fear the report’s recommended roaming prices are so low that independent virtual operators will be barred from competing, said Innocenzo Genna, speaking for Italian MVNO Poste Mobile and independents in general. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development warned that any solution to pricey roaming rates must consider smaller players.
Revamped data protection rules will make Europe an “international standard-setter” in the privacy arena, Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said Wednesday. The reform package, which must be approved by the European Parliament and Council of Ministers, includes a regulation with general rules for data protection (DP) and a directive governing use of personal data in criminal investigations and prosecutions. It updates 1995 rules that aren’t “fit for the digital age,” Reding said. It requires explicit consent to use personal data and provides a “right to be forgotten” when consumers withdraw personal information from social networks and other sites, she said. Any company that wants to do business in Europe will have to comply, she said. In a related privacy move, Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes continued her push Tuesday for a ‘Do-Not-Track’ industry standard.