Hacking Data Retention

In the fight against terror too often we it is said that a balance between privacy and security has to be sought. In many cases this is bad news for privacy. The plans to have Internet Service Providers store all movements made by their customers for years is a prominent example. However some people will claim that this "data retention" will make our lives safer. But will it really?

In the presentation examples will be given how easy it is to circumvent the government control in numerous ways. The proof shows that the approach will inconvenience a somewhat intelligent terrorist at most, making the measure very inefficient. Meanwhile it is easy to make dangerous mistakes, coming to wrong conclusion from misinterpreted or just plain wrong data. With examples from cases where mistakes were already made as well as examples how to mislead crime fighters the story will be very realistic and anything but theoretical.

Given the facts of an error prone approach to security and amazingly high level of inefficiency, it will become clear that data retention might actually might make us even more insecure than we already are. The attendee has to make up their own mind if the trade-off between privacy and security is a good one in this case.