EU data retention in current form is likely to fall

At least it's heading in the right direction. They could just as easily have decided that the EU law violated the data retention policy, and that the law had to be changed.

When ever Sweden talks about surveillance, one have to remember that they acts as merchants. They supply information in secret, and has done so since the cold war.

The FRA law and EU data retention has all been to increase the warehouse supply of data. Its not about spying on our own population. The warehouses are simply getting empty, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs feels unimportant. The Snowden documents was quite clear on this, and gives the suggestion that US diplomats should throw a bone to him once in a while to reinforce this behavior so more and more information can be extracted.

So not only are we merchants of spying, but bad ones at getting anything in return.

I'm glad all of this happened before the new EU privacy law passed, too, because all of these revelations should've put a permanent stop on US companies' lobbying for weaker privacy in EU, and it may even add some new stronger protections by the time it gets voted on, because of this. If the data retention one falls, too, even better.

> It would be lovely if it would fall through Ireland, since the Irish have consistently been the most vocal proponent of surrendering EU privacy protections to American business and government interests.

I can't agree with you more on this issue. Sadly, this point is often overlooked - even by the Irish public. A bit of insight shows that Ireland, with its recent history of colonial sufferings, has yet again 'prostituted' [1] itself to imperialism through unbelievable tax loopholes for US tech giants.

One could expand further and argue that the Irish political class also willingly enslaved the people to financial 'colonialism' when they nationalized private bank debt.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnmwuRpfKr8

> That, plus the fact that in countries like Sweden and Denmark intelligence agencies have already abused the directive to go completely NSA on their own population is just adding nails to the coffin.

As a Danish resident, I'm interested in information about this (I already know about Sweden). Do you have any source?