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EU privacy reform: What you can do now

By EDRi · May 22, 2013

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: [EU Datenschutzreform: Was wir jetzt tun können | https://www.unwatched.org/EDRigram_11.10_EU_Datenschutzreform_Was_wir_jetzt_tun_koennen?pk_campaign=edri&pk_kwd=20130526]

The data protection reform has entered the “hot” phase. More than 4000 amendments have been tabled in the European Parliament and MEPs are now trying to find compromises in order to vote on the Albrecht report before the summer break.

Last week, a coalition of European and international civil rights groups (Access, Bits of Freedom, Digitale Gesellschaft, La Quadrature du Net, Open Rights Group, Panoptykon, Privacy International and EDRi) organised a three-day barcamp and activist safari to establish a small counterweight to the massive industry lobbying efforts in the Parliament over the past several months.

The nakedcitizens.eu campaign is a response to these unprecedented lobbying activities. It was kicked off with the publication of a report on 25 April which revealed that many of the tabled amendments threaten to critically undermine the privacy of EU citizens. The goal of last week’s privacy camp, as a part of the campaign, was to put civil society activists and privacy advocates in touch with their Parliamentarians and to explain why some proposals would be damaging for EU citizens’ privacy rights.

What you can do now

Since the compromise amendments are being discussed at this very moment, the time to act is now. If all goes well, the lead committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) will vote on these compromises before the summer break. You can find the most important points in the “naked citizens” report. There are several options to take action – depending on the amount of time you have:

2 minutes: Watch and share this short video via your social networks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N2eYE6koe8

5 minutes: Send a postcard to your Parliamentarian via http://nakedcitizens.eu.

10 minutes: the best way to have your voice heard is to be as specific and as personal as possible – so with just a few more minutes, you can send an email to conservative and liberal members of the LIBE committee via http://www.privacycampaign.eu.

15 minutes: Call your Parliamentarians. You can do so to follow up on your emails. Calling is free of charge via the PiPhone: http://piphone.lqdn.fr/campaign/call2/DataProtection-LIBE-all#mep

Links:
Naked citizens report: Don’t let corporations strip citizens of their right to privacy
https://edri.org/files/2013-campaign-report.pdf

European Parliament report on the Data Protection Regulation and
Amendments
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/de/libe/amendments.html?linkedDocument=true&ufolderComCode=LIBE&ufolderLegId=7&ufolderId=08739&urefProcYear=&urefProcNum=&urefProcCode=#menuzone

Contact details of all Members of the LIBE committee
https://memopol.lqdn.fr/search/?q=committees%3ALIBE%20is_active%3A1

(Contribution by Kirsten Fiedler – EDRi)