Open letter on data retention

A whole plethora of digital rights groups have written an Open Letter to the European Parliament on Data Retention.

58000 people from all over Europe have signed a petition against data retention.

Will it make a difference to the European Parliament vote on the issue on 13 December? Only time will tell but it looks like the version of the proposal to go before the parliament will require two years data retention.

This process of repeatedly sending back lousy legislative proposals through the EU system, until opposition is chipped away though the lack of energy to be bothered with it again, seriously undermines the EU. But then representative democracy, which is what the parliament is supposed to be based on, only works if a sufficient number of dedicated people (albeit that sufficent number can range from 1 upwards) take an active interest. Nearly 60000 people have shown an interest here but in this case I'm not sure it's going to be enough.