Telecoms-Package Analysis Compromise-Amendments ITRE-IMCO 7th-July
La Quadrature du Net has serious concern regarding several amendments that may be about to be adopted in the European Parliament in respect of the proposed Telecom Package in Parliament currently undergoing first reading. We believe these amendments seriously threaten the open architecture of the Internet, mere conduit principle and the rights and fundamental freedoms of its users.
The amendments are currently being negotiated in two European Parliament committees: Internal Market ( IMCO) and Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE). If passed these harmful amendments agreed will be included in new draft law on the telecoms framework and consumer rights in respect of telecoms services. The Telecom Framework is what sets the rules for telecom operators and internet service providers across the EU's single market.
Amendment H1, proposed by the British Conservative MEP Malcolm Harbour, gives the European Commission the power to give recommendations about restrictions on "lawful content" access and distribution, or on execution of "lawful applications or services".
The Commission could, if this amendment is adopted, impose technical standards on content filtering and monitoring computing - so called "trusted computing". The Commission would be able to give the concerned by this regulation recommendations following a quick and undemocratic procedure, at the request of any national regulation authority (ARCEP, CSA, HADOPI in France, OFCOM in the UK, PTS in Sweden).
This amendment by Malcolm Harbour is supplemented by several further harmful amendments of fellow English Conservative MEP Syed Kamall, already adopted in the LIBE Committee, and which Mr. Harbour has announced he wanted to support.
Amendment K1 empowers the Commission to authorize "technical measures" to prevent or stop infringements of intellectual property. For this to occurs it would be necessary to monitor and filter users' electronic communications with hardware and software, which in practice amounts to spyware replacing a judge and proper judicial oversight.
Amendment K2 authorises the automatic processing of traffic data without the consent of the user, if this treatment is practiced to ensure "the safety of a public service of electronic communication, a public or private electronic communications , a service of the information society and electronic communicating equipment. "
Amendment K2 is a major breach for the protection of personal data and privacy, as it allows businesses to remotely control user's electronic communications without their consent. Coupled with amendments H1 and K2 , it paves the way for the deployment of intrusive technologies on the client or in ISP boxes according to the whim of the Commission, and, also, the monitoring by the publishers of services and intermediaries (ISP and hosting), in the name of security and IPR.
In addition, two other amendments, H2 and H3, allow national regulatory authorities to impose access providers to work with rightsholders, in monitoring users specifically when their access is not "safe" (e.g. used to download), and to promote surveillance technologies mentioned above, which is similarly contained in the French draft law for graduated response.
Supplemented by another by Catherine Trautmann (amendment T1), this set of amendments creates in European law the unprecedented mechanism known as graduated response: Judicial authority and law courts are vacated in favour of private actors and "technical measures" of surveillance and filtering. According to rules set by administrative authorities and rights holders, intermediaries will be forced to cooperate in monitoring and filtering their subscribers, or exposed to administrative sanctions.
