[Air-L] Details on data retention in Turkey?

Wed Sep 10 08:39:05 PDT 2014

Hi Oliver,

I am under time pressure so only a short response:

1) the Presidency of Telecommunications and Communications (I am not joking about the repetition! See here [1]) is now responsible for data retention, meaning all “traffic data” will be provided to them directly. From the vague description in the newspapers it sounds like they want real time transfer of the data to TIB.
2) The traffic data, also known in the Anglophone world as metadata will consist of url visited and duration of stay. 
3) The law that was introduced in February and that extended the Turkish Internet Law 5651 required data retention between 6 months and 2 years, I do not see any limitations brought to how long TIB will retain the data in the new law. However, I did not study the original document, I am translating from newspaper articles. I can get back to you about this next week.

The same extension to 5651 in February also introduced a committee of ISPs that would respond to data retention and censorship needs. From a competition law perspective this requirement was a disaster, also because of the cost of installing expensive DPI (which is currently being purchased from Sweden). 

I did not hear of any resistance on the side of the ISPs since the new law in February. Large corporations are very aware in Turkey that if they resist the government very soon after they will be audited to death. See what happened to Dogan Holding, the local media mogul, a couple of years ago. So, resistance is futile, it just means you are ready to give up your market place. But, let us be surprised.

If you don’t mind robot translations, you may want to follow Fusun Nebil’s writings at turk-internet. It is a mainstream outlet but she knows her stuff. Here is her commentary for today:
http://www.turk-internet.com/portal/yazigoster.php?yaziid=47863
In her final paragraph she is hoping that the constitutional court will stop the new additions to the law.

cheers,
s.

[1] http://www.tib.gov.tr/en/
On Sep 10, 2014, at 10:49 AM, Ogan, Christine L. <ogan at indiana.edu> wrote:

> Dear Oliver:  Those are all excellent questions and I hope someone on the list can answer those definitively.  I do not have access to that information and could only provide my opinion.  
> Chris
> ________________________________________
> From: Oliver Leistert [leistert at mail.uni-paderborn.de]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2014 10:42 AM
> To: Ogan, Christine L.; air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Details on data retention in Turkey?
> 
> Thank you, Ogan. But still: for a proper data retention scheme, like the
> one the EU was after with its Directive 2006/24/EC, a lot of changes
> would have to be done on the hardwareside, too. The European Internet
> Provder's protested against the Directive amongst other things because
> of rising costs for them to provide such storage capacities. Can we
> expect this from Turkish providers now, too?
> 
> Or will all the data be stored at some state organisation?
> 
> And then: what are the storage durations? You can just not store
> everything without limit in duration.
> 
> And finally: what is it precisely that is being stored? Mobile phone
> meta-data, classic internet traffic, etc.? A law itself does not
> implement these capacities.
> 
> Finally, who has access to this data under which conditions? Although
> the answer to this question by studying the bill and its implementation
> documents does not tell much about the practice to expect.
> 
> -Oliver
> 
> 
> 
> On 09/10/2014 04:07 PM, Ogan, Christine L. wrote:
>> I think you could safely say that everyone is watched for any reason on all their devices regardless of the reasonable decision to obtain court orders for shutting down web sites.
>> 
>> See this website for a list of the documented 50,918 sites that have been shut already (but by the time you check it out, that number may have increased). http://engelliweb.com
>> I hope that helps,
>> 
>> But don't take my word.  Here is a quote from Turkish Internet Rights activists Yaman Akdeniz and Kerem Altiparmak. "“Between May 2007 and July 2014 Turkey blocked access to approximately 48,000 websites,” based on a recently updated law. Akdeniz and Altiparmak added that “Although the law is ostensibly aimed to protect children from harmful content, from the very beginning it has been used to prevent adults’ access to information.” It came from a Forbes web site.  And here is a website they manage:  http://privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr   Also a link to more information by someone who was covering the Internet Governance Forum in Istanbul that was held this month:  http://www.dw.de/turkey-faces-criticism-as-host-of-the-internet-governance-forum/a-17899512
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> 
>> Christine Ogan
>> Prof. Emerita
>> School of Informatics and Computing
>> School of Journalism
>> Indiana University
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ________________________________________
>> From: Air-L [air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] on behalf of Oliver Leistert [leistert at mail.uni-paderborn.de]
>> Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2014 6:44 AM
>> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
>> Subject: [Air-L] Details on data retention in Turkey?
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> so Turkey passed a bill to shut down websites without court orders. This
>> is what makes the headlines:
>> 
>> http://online.wsj.com/articles/turkey-tightens-grip-over-the-internet-1410279325
>> 
>> But the news also state that data of users will be retained. Has anyone
>> on this list futher details about this Turkish data retention scheme?
>> 
>> Thank you,
>> Oliver
>> _______________________________________________
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>> http://www.aoir.org/
>> 
> 
> 
> --
> Dr. Oliver Leistert
> Graduiertenkolleg "Automatismen"
> University of Paderborn
> Warburger Str. 100
> D-33098 Paderborn
> Tel:+49-5251 / 60 - 3230
> www.upb.de/gk-automatismen
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