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Slovak Constitutional Court cancels mass surveillance of citizens
- lubos 11y agoThis is related to "Data Retention Directive" [1] which was declared invalid by EU Court of Justice for violating EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. It means member EU states must update their legislation which will prohibit metadata retention by communication operators (including ISPs) to absolute minimum (generally only what's required for invoicing). That's why this ruling by Slovak Constitutional Court seems a bit pointless. Slovak parliament would prohibit mass surveillance sooner or later anyway as a result of EU Court of Justice ruling. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive
- madez 11y agoI wonder why politicians that enact unconstitutional laws don't get punished. They breached the rules. Everybody else except bankers and the police get punished for that.
- ctolsen 11y agoLeaders who do unconstitutional things might be. If you trample on your citizens sufficiently, you might live to see the inside of the Hague. But it would be completely ridiculous to imprison someone for passing a law. The process here did exactly what it's supposed to do. Politicians make a law. People are unhappy with said law and challenge it. People win in court. Law is no longer in force and the people get their redress. Also, politicians might enact an unconstitutional law with popular support. And even if that doesn't happen, it is far from obvious what is constitutional and what is not. Should John McCain go to prison because of Citizens United? Should local politicians be incarcerated after the city lost McDonald v Chicago? That would be ridiculous. Lastly it would mean punishing people for something that doesn't have an enumerated punishment. We don't do that in the modern world.
- jsnathan 11y agoIntentionally violating the constitution is a violation of the privileges of office. If it can be proven, they should be forced out of office. As for the "punishment", it should clearly correspond to the actual law having been passed, and in what manner it infringed on the constitutional rights of citizens. Popular support does not make this any better, as minorities are usually the ones who end up hurt.
- ctolsen 11y agoPoliticians can be forced out of office for anything. It's called elections. Most countries also have some kind of impeachment process. Are you saying politicians shouldn't attempt to do what their constituents sent them to do, under the penalty of imprisonment? Minorities are protected not by politics, rather by judicial review, which worked great in this case.
- jsnathan 11y agoAre you suggesting that elections should give people a status that puts them beyond the countries constitution? Remember that these principles are so general, they must apply equally to Western politicians pushing security policies, as to e.g. Muslim politicians in Egypt or other ME countries pushing for Sharia-inspired policies. What their constituents want is a nice idea until this violates the most basic rights of citizens spelled out clearly for this purpose, i.e. to guide and limit any future laws. That being said, there is always the possibility of revising the constitution. Even if that is not a good idea. But for good reason, that is a lot more difficult to accomplish.
- ctolsen 11y agoIt's not putting them above a constitution. There is a process in place to resolve constitutional issues. In this case it worked perfectly. Punishing people merely for passing a law would itself be unconstitutional. There is no enumerated punishment nor is there any reasonable way to assert culpability.
- rayiner 11y agoSo if Justice Roberts was feeling slightly different one morning, we should have punished Obama for trying to pass an unconstitutional law?
- pcwalton 11y agoI agree that we shouldn't prosecute politicians for this kind of thing, but note that Justice Roberts feeling different one morning can mean the difference between punishment and not for ordinary people when the law in question is unsettled. (Morse v. Frederick comes to mind.)
- Arnt 11y agoBecause there isn't a law against enacting unconstitutional laws. Actions are legal by default. I suspect that if you try to write a coherent rule set that would punish those who vote to enact unconstitutional laws, you might find the solution worse than the problem. For instance, think about the relationship between punishable votes and secret elections.
- eli 11y agoSure, then we'll lock up developers who write insecure software. I think we'll need some bigger jails.
- atlantic 11y agoEuropean directives are often ignored by national governments, until they are challenged in court (often in the European courts) and actually forced to implement them. So any efforts by the various national courts and legislatures are very welcome and hardly pointless.
- throwaway7767 11y agoThe ECJ declared the data retention directive invalid, which means that member states are not required to implement it in their legislature. However, that decision does not remove the DRD from effect in the countries that already implemented it and it does not ban countries from implementing their own version of it. It sounds like the slovak government was trying to implement its own version despite the europe-wide law being struck down.
- zurn 11y ago> It sounds like the slovak government was trying to implement its own version despite the europe-wide law being struck down. EU countries first decided to create the directive, and then implemented this while it was in force. There was no big bad EU imposing it on reluctant states. And now most countries are in no hurry to dismantle the their national legislation implementing the directive.
- vilhelm_s 11y agoSo how exactly does this "Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union" work? Wikipedia says > European Union must act and legislate consistently with the Charter and the EU's courts will strike down legislation adopted by the EU's institutions that contravenes it. So somehow it constrains EU institutions, but not EU member states, somewhat like the US Bill of Rights before the 14th amendment?
- cies 11y agoI expect some small EU countries, probably East-European, have governments that are agile/smart enough to pull serious datacenter biz into their borders by passing sensible legislation and backing it up with actual (non-)action. They are in many ways more sovereign then the larger and/or more economically developed EU nations. And they still have politicians that are concerned with (democratic) principles, instead of the two-faced puppets of plutocracy that we find waaaay to often in high public positions. Go Slovakia!
- xixixao 11y agoClearly you don't live in the region. Since I've lived in both Central Europe and the UK and US, I can guarantee you that corruption blossoms (at least as judged by the public) everywhere the same. P.S.: Slovakia is in Central, not Eastern Europe, and things get generally worse as you go East.
- osense 11y agoIt's a bit funny you should say that, because right now there is this huge case about the government tunneling a private corporation which was supposed to build highways in the country all around the news in Slovakia :)
- zurn 11y agoTransparency International publishes this thing so we don't need to go by gut feelings re. corruption as judged by the public: http://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results http://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results Spoiler: Big differences across Europe
- yellowapple 11y agoI love how Greenland's, like, some sort of anti-corruption candle on that map. Also, I'm surprised that New Zealand, of all places, ranks higher than all but Denmark in cleanliness (and not surprised that North Korea and Somalia are tied in corruption).
- wassyape 11y ago
- scrrr 11y agoRest of the EU: Please follow this example.
- danieldk 11y agoIt's already shut/shot down in multiple EU countries. E.g. in The Netherlands in March and in Germany in 2010. There seems to be a complete overview here: http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Transposition http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Transposition
- jessaustin 11y agoWow I wish we had Slovakian jurists here in USA.
- koniiiik 11y agoNo, you don't. (-; As we say in Slovak, one swallow does not make summer. Good decisions like this one are massively outnumbered by "process errors" (or whatever it is called on English) covering the asses of mafia backed by our elected government officials.
- thawkins 11y agoNot exactly a slovak saying, comes from greece From wikitionary An allusion to the return of migrating swallows at the start of the summer season. From a remark by Aristotle (384 BCE - 322 BCE): "One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy."
- koniiiik 11y agoI don't recall claiming that this saying originates from Slovakia, only that it's one that is relatively common there. I have also heard it used in Czech, but I don't think I've ever heard it in English, hence the remark.
- jessaustin 11y agoHaha I thought we were talking about beer. Presumably "swallow" is not a homonym in Slovak or Greek.
- richwalinsky 11y agoEU countries decided to create the directive, and then implemented this while it was in force. It is slovak government
- honeybooboo123 11y agoDoes anyone believe they've actually stopped?
- runn1ng 11y agoI cannot find any source in Slovakian language (I can understand it). Does anyone have that?
- throwaway12357 11y agoDoes the "Data Retention Directive" [1] also apply to UK? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive
- germanier 11y agoIf it wouldn't have been challenged in the CJEU and thus made invalid everywhere, yes it would.
- malandrew 11y agoI want to see more and more countries adopt a similar measure publicly, because as more countries pass such laws, the more it bluntly highlights that the "Land of the Free" can only live up to that maxim if it too passes laws canceling mass surveillance of its citizens.
- dubcanada 11y agoAre you saying if more countries adopt things US will too? Cause we all know that is just not true.
- akulbe 11y agoIf only enough other countries did this same thing... that there was enormous enough pressure on the usual suspects (US, UK, NZ, CA, AU) to do this too. I'm afraid we're long past the point of that happening, though, and it makes me sad.