Today, the german parliament is going to enact a EU anti-terrorist law that makes communication providers save data at least six months from every user. This data can then be searched by the authorities to persecute "heavy crime". Here is what is saved: Every number you dial, which persons you contact by message, how long you have talked, when using a cellphone the locations of both participants is kept. Every email adress you use, where you write to and from whom you get mails. Also is saved the time you went online and for how long. The usage of anonymizers will be forbidden for EU citizens. This way, the authorities can combine the information via data processing and create a "social web" of every citizen, showing the authorities a person´s all social contacts at a glance.

Journalists argue that they then have to find conspirative measures to get inofficial information from the government, as the informants could be easily traced and would risk getting uncovered. Lawyers object since they want to keep a private atmosphere between them and their clients. And finally privacy protection organisations point out that with the combination of the cell phone data, it will be easy to create a "movement profile" for every citizen.

This week, 15.000 people demostrated against this legislative project in Berlin, which is a hell of a demonstration in Germany.

The law is expected to go into effect at january 1st 2008. The project is called "Vorratsdatenspeicherung", literally meaning "stockpile data storage".
It is the incorporation of a EU-directive: In the aftermath of terror strikes in London and Madrid, it became clear that terrorist networks can be easily uncovered when one terrorist is identified and then his social network is analysed.