Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-05-Speech-3-375"
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"en.20010905.11.3-375"2
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"Mr President, the Commission communication on the safe Information Society complements the preceding initiatives, in particular the global plan of action for electronic communications in Europe, and will require further interventions in a field that is constantly evolving.
If we want e-commerce to have a future, we cannot force consumers to spend their time cancelling unwanted messages or pursuing their senders to beg to be left in peace. There is no reason not to ensure the same protection for e-mail as there is for faxes; the highest level of protection of people’s rights will also ensure the highest consumer loyalty.
The Cederschiöld report approves of this initiative and enhances it with appropriate legislative measures and suggestions for cooperation instruments to increase the effectiveness of the fight against cybercrime and to ensure a balance between demands for the prevention and punishment of crime and respect for civil liberties. This balance, which is guaranteed in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, must always guide the actions of the European Union, and for this reason, too, the broad and accurate Cederschiöld report deserves our full agreement.
The Commission’s draft directive also deserves great appreciation; it aims to update personal data protection in the electronic communications sector and not to leave things as they are, since harmonisation is necessary.
On the one hand, the Cappato report proposes useful additions to the directive which reinforce the limits placed on the invasion of privacy by public authorities, especially as regards forms of generalised electronic surveillance, which was discussed this morning. In this it will certainly be supported, even though, unfortunately, our legislative powers do not exist in this area. In other respects, however, the Cappato report reduces the protection of citizens’ privacy offered by the draft directive, particularly where we have legislative competence.
The Commission proposes that European citizens’ e-mail addresses and mobile telephone data could be included in public lists and given out on-line only if the interested parties had given their prior consent. The Cappato report, on the other hand, proposes that e-mail addresses and mobile telephone data should be included on public lists and each interested party could ask to have them taken off.
An analogous difference, we have already heard, concerns the regulation of unsolicited communications for direct marketing purposes. The European Commission proposes that messages should not be sent except to those who have given their own express consent, just as now happens with faxes. The Cappato report proposes that the opt-out system could also be adopted.
If you consider the speed at which a list of e-mail addresses could be circulated on-line and come to the attention of an unlimited number of people interested in sending unsolicited messages, and if you consider the cost in time and money of eliminating these unwelcome messages and sending requests to the various senders to stop forwarding them, you will have an idea of the burden on citizens of adopting the opt-out system. It is a prospect that runs the risk of discouraging and deterring people from using the net and e-commerce.
In an amusing article, an Italian journalist wrote: ‘I thought I had bought a little telephone, but found myself with a
that Japanese toy that needs looking after like a baby. My phone company never leaves me alone; it sends me so many messages, like a teenager; it asks me if I want to take part in a competition, if I know about certain new discounts; it greets me when I go abroad, and then it welcomes me back.’
Just think when your mobile number and e-mail address are known not only by your own service provider but by all possible service providers in the world, who never confine themselves to selling goods but want their brand to please you, to seduce you and to belong to you."@en1
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"tamagochi"1
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