Net companies are challenging French data retention law !!!!!!!!!!!!

Internet companies are lining up to challenge a French law mandating they retain users' personal data - and passwords - for a year in case the government wants it.

More than twenty Internet companies conducting business in France have put their names behind a complaint brought to France’s State Council by the French Association of Internet Community Services (ASIC). At issue is a new French law that mandates the companies retain customer information—including name, address, phone numbers, email addresses, as well as usage records and passwords—for a year. The idea behind that law is to keep the data available in the event there is ever a police, security, or governmental inquiry that required it: causes could range from trying to root out terrorists to settling customs, tax, copyright, or social security inquiries.

Internet giants like Google, Facebook, eBay, and DailyMotion have signed on to the complaint. France enacted the legislation on its own, independent of the European Union. The requirement that service providers supply accounts passwords in response to government inquiries may be unique in the world.

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Wireless companies ‘track your every move’!!!!!!!!!!!

Evidence revealed in a German lawsuit against telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom, owner of T-Mobile USA, shows that cellphone companies keep records of every move you make.

Big Brother really is watching you — constantly. According to a new report by The New York Times, cell phone companies often “track your every move” — and they do so while keeping their customers entirely in the dark about the intrusive practice.

This disconcerting revelation came to light after German politician Malte Spitz sued his mobile provider, Deutsche Telekom, to find out exactly what information about him they had acquired. What the court revealed is shocking — even if it’s not much of a surprise to those suspicious of our ceaseless connectivity.

Between the end of August, 2009 to the end of February, 2010, Deutsche Telekom, current owner of T-Mobile, “had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times,” The New York Times reports. Privacy experts say the information divulged as a result of the lawsuit provides an unprecedented look into the invasive workings of the world’s telecoms.

“We are all walking around with little tags, and our tag has a phone number associated with it, who we called and what we do with the phone,” Sarah E. Williams, a graphic information expert at Columbia University tells the Times. “We don’t even know we are giving up that data.”

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