So, the bad news — it appears that the European Parliament has passed the ‘Data Retention’ Directive, introducing requiring EU states to introduce mandatory electronic surveillance of all European citizens.
Tuppenceworth.ie has looked up how the Irish MEPs voted on the Directive. I was appalled to discover that Proinsias De Rossa (Labour) was the only Irish MEP to vote for this surveillance.
I generally give a high preference to Labour when voting, and before that, Democratic Left, and I’ve voted for him several times in the past. However, I think this may be the deal-breaker. I’m extremely disappointed.
By the way if party line was the issue — that didn’t stop Gay Mitchell (Fine Gael), who broke party line on this, saying:
I do not know why this proposal was rushed. The extremely accelerated legislation procedure has meant that there was little time for discussion, and translations were sometimes unavailable. There was also no time for a technology assessment or for a study on the impact on the internal market.
Major credit to him.
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