Hey, hey! “The best of” from our latest news section is definitely the one about the ECJ ruling on the Data Retention Directive. Ruling the case between Digital Rights Ireland Ltd. and several Irish authorities, the European Court of Justice(ECJ) has just made it clearer than ever that the fundamental human rights are indeed fundamental and that our main concern is to protect the personal, private data and not a wild goose chase a.k.a terrorism and stuff.

Here is a short extract from the ECJ’s latest press release: “The Court takes the view that, by requiring of those data and by allowing the competent national authorities to access those data, the directive interferes in a particularly serious manner with the fundamental rights to respect for private life and to the protection of personal data.”

Last week, it was the triumph of net neutrality and now this!! I wonder what’s hiding behind all these good news.
And to continue in this false negative attitude, I must admit that, as a Romanian citizen, I am now concerned about the “tragic fate” of some internal laws such as Law no.298/2008 and its copycat sister Law no.82/2012 on the retention of personal data generated or processed by electronic communications services providers.

I am also concerned about drones (☺) but this time with good reason because drones are legal in our neighbors proverbial back yards! This news came from znet.com, which has just announced that the Dutch parliament has approved a law that will allow drones (oho!) to be used for video surveillance of the country’s citizens. Am I the only one who can picture this?? What can I say about this? It seems that we’ve given data retention annulment in exchange for our full surveillance. Because now we know for sure that there is another Big Brother in town.

This week’s question:
Are some of us paranoid or NOT? Look what the OTHER PARTY said: “Camera surveillance contributes to improved public safety and makes nuisance, violence and crime significantly more visible”.