Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-07-Speech-3-031"
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"en.20050907.2.3-031"2
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"Mr President, Minister, I know from our numerous discussions that you are highly sensitive to the question of protection for citizens' fundamental rights and personal data. However, it would have been a good thing if, instead of three, you had proposed five basic guidelines: not only international cooperation, not only the need for effective police cooperation, not only the need to use modern technology, but also laws and institutions for the protection of personal freedoms at the same time, together with political and social programmes to combat the phenomenon of terrorism.
In other words
you foresee that in future these measures will not be necessary at all. Have you made provision or will you make provision, when this happens, for the use of data retention to stop or not?
Personal freedoms and the fight against terrorism are not mutually exclusive. If citizens feel, even for no real reason, that they are being monitored excessively, then they censor themselves and that is a threat to democracy and a victory for the terrorists.
All this is important when it comes to examining proposals to keep records of European citizens' electronic communications. Today you demonstrated to us that access to these data is extremely useful in all instances. You also demonstrated to us that, in certain cases, it was necessary.
However, the Presidency has not yet tabled a study referring to all cases where access to these data, even if useful, was not necessary. I would be obliged if you could do so. The test, I would remind you, is not that the measures should be useful or even that they should be important. The test is that the measures should be necessary. They must also be proportionate. We must assure citizens that records of their telecommunications which are kept for long periods of time will be absolutely safe, not only against abuse by the state, but also – and I would emphasise this – by private individuals. Not everyone who works in a telecommunications company is an angel.
Consequently, there can be no legislative initiative on the matter without provision for and independent judicial, government and parliamentary monitoring in practice, in order to ensure that neither private nor government service providers can trawl through these huge databases for illegal purposes and that they are effectively protected against hackers.
Minister, today there is as yet no framework for data protection under the third pillar, under which the Council is promoting its initiative. Withdraw it and let us all work together on the forthcoming initiative by the Commission and Mr Frattini.
You are right to refer to the negative results of the rejection of the Constitution by certain Member States. However, the rejection was the result of the feeling of many citizens that their voice is not heard in Europe and denying Parliament a codecision role in decisions of such import obviously does not help.
To close, Minister, it says in the paper you circulated to us, and I quote:
'In the future, some criminals and terrorists will adapt their use of technology to make the retention of this data a less important tool for investigations.'"@en1
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