There is also a international dimension, with transatlantic agreements on privacy,  cybersecurity and surveillance being publically discussed, and it is clear these things are interrelated, addressing one will always involve consideration of the others.

There does not have to be a trade-off, no need to forgo privacy for the sake of security. We should be able to build a system with them all.

What is needed is a clearly expressed “statement of requirements” i.e. we want to protect privacy and security within a transparent and democratically  accountable framework which, for example, allows law enforcement to do its job (using warranted surveillance if necessary), but rules out mass surveillance.  Because the net knows no borders there has to be a transnational component.

The W3C could then do its part helping to create the necessary protocols and standards, while the politicians take charge of the oversight process and creating the legal environment.

Mike

From: Danny Weitzner [mailto:djweitzner@csail.mit.edu]
Sent: 27 January 2015 01:15
To: Rigo Wenning; public-privacy@w3.org
Cc: David Singer
Subject: Re: On the european response to Snowden

further decoding: the EU has no authority over national security matters (ie foreign intelligence gathering) in its member states. Directive Rigo mentions will apply to law enforcement -- a good start, but not sufficient.

On Mon Jan 26 2015 at 12:54:41 PM Rigo Wenning <rigo@w3.org> wrote:

On Monday 26 January 2015 9:52:35 David Singer wrote:
> interesting article
>
> <http://www.ecfr.eu/publications/summary/mass_surveillance_privacy_and_secur
> ity_europes_confused_response329>

Decoding:

The privacy regulation is under way and shall be voted in 2015. But it only
touches on data protection and communications of the private sector.

There is a parallel "Directive" on data protection in government. Directive
means that it isn't directly nationally applicable (the regulation above will
be). A Directive needs a national legislative act to be effective. This
Directive touches on the issue of Pervasive Monitoring. There is debate, but
the debate is somewhat silenced by other issues, like Greece, the war in
Ukraine. Also the freedom of speech against islamist threatening is at the
forefront as you can imagine

BTW, while the discussion is somewhat low in France, Italy and Greece, the
debate on Pervasive Monitoring is happening in the Netherlands, Germany and
Belgium. There is certainly a tension between what governments would like to
do and what the population is willing to let them do in terms of surveillance.

 --Rigo