Data Retention as a Sexual Fetish: The Control Fantasy That Won’t Die

Every year, like clockwork, conservative politicians across the EU try to reintroduce mandatory data retention laws for ISPs. Despite multiple ECJ rulings declaring such laws incompatible with fundamental rights, despite the lack of evidence that these measures prevent crime, and despite the clear lessons of history — they keep coming back.

At this point, we should stop pretending this is about public safety.

It’s time to say the quiet part out loud:

Mandatory data retention is a political fetish. A compulsive control kink disguised as security policy.

The Control Fantasy

Data retention is the digital equivalent of standing over a sleeping citizen with a clipboard and stopwatch. It says:

• “We must record everyone’s metadata — just in case.”
• “You have nothing to hide, so we have nothing to fear.”
• “You’ll be safer if we quietly watch everything.”

To the surveillance-addicted mind, this is not intrusive. It’s reassuring. It feels tidy. It creates the illusion that, if something bad happens, they’ll be able to press play and magically rewind to find the villain.

But this isn’t crime prevention. It’s forensic voyeurism, dressed up in legislative language.

And like many fixations, the thrill is in the asymmetry: fetishism doesn’t ask for consent — in fact, it’s often fueled by its absence.

The Illusion of Safety

The historical record is clear: collecting more data does not equal more safety.

Let’s look at two key examples from U.S. intelligence history:

1. The Hainan Incident (2001)

A U.S. Navy spyplane collided with a Chinese fighter jet and made an emergency landing in China. The aircraft was stuffed with signals intelligence (SIGINT) gear — surveillance hardware designed to suck in enormous amounts of data.

The problem? The U.S. couldn’t protect it. Nor could they make meaningful strategic decisions from the data once the platform was compromised. It was an intelligence embarrassment, not a victory.

2. 9/11

The ultimate failure of overconfidence and under-connection. U.S. agencies had plenty of data on Al-Qaeda. The CIA knew operatives were in the country. The FBI had received tips. And yet, the system did nothing.

Why?

Because bulk data without human insight, coordination, or timely judgment is noise. The intelligence community missed the signal in the fog of collection.

Bulk Data Is a Bureaucratic Drug

Politicians love it because it:

• Feels powerful.
• Sounds decisive.
• Requires no creativity, no talent, and no nuanced policing.

It replaces hard investigative work with a spreadsheet fantasy.

This is not strategy. This is ritualized control behavior.

And one can’t help but notice how many of its proponents exhibit the quiet zeal of men who get off on watching others without being seen.

So Let’s Call It What It Is

A state that demands to hoard the communications of every citizen, while failing to invest in analysis, prevention, or trust, is not protecting anyone.

It is performing a fetish — of surveillance, of control, of imagined omniscience.

And like all fetishes, it’s immune to reason. It persists even after being struck down in court, disproven in practice, and discredited by history.

We Deserve Better

We do not need more storage servers hoarding metadata.
We need:

• Well-trained investigators.
• Courageous analysts.
• Systems that prioritize understanding over accumulation.

We’ve already paid the price for the illusion that data = safety.
We should not pay it again just to satisfy the control fantasies of politicians who think privacy is suspicious and oversight is optional.

Security is not the absence of secrets.
It is the presence of judgment.

Let’s stop letting voyeurs write policy.