EDRi-gram, 21 January 2026
What has the EDRi network been up to over the past few weeks? Find out the latest digital rights news in our bi-weekly newsletter. In this edition: EDRi’s 2025 year in review, new resource to support an EU spyware ban, DSA delayed in Poland, & more!
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Dear supporters,
The cheer of the holiday season feels like a distant dream just three weeks into 2026. Things are expectedly tense in Brussels with Trump’s increasingly aggressive threats about seizing Greenland, with an emergency summit of EU leaders set to take place later this week. EU’s tech policy is inextricably connected to it all – some lawmakers want the EU to strike back against US Big Tech if Trump follows through on threats.
It’s never been clearer that tech is overwhelmingly playing a key role in geopolitical tussles. In the past few months, EU lawmakers have shown that they are willing to use people’s rights and freedoms online as bargaining chips. At such a time, the role of civil society organisations like EDRi and our members is more critical than ever before. In 2026, we want to continue building collective power. Doing this also means reflecting on how we’ve done so far. Read EDRi’s year in review for 2025 and how we have resisted and persisted despite the turbulent times, shifting political landscapes and shrinking civic space.
In this EDRigram you can also read about how EDRi members are resisting algorithmic discrimination – Bits of Freedom in Netherlands, and La Quadrature du Net together with a 25 strong coalition (including EDRi!) in France. You can also explore our new document pool which will collect resources to strengthen the case for an EU-wide ban on spyware. Strap in, there’s lots going on the first EDRigram edition of 2026!
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EDRi’s 2025 in review: we resisted, we persisted
As for most civil society organisations, 2025 was a tumultuous and challenging year for EDRi. Shifting political landscapes and shrinking civic space have made the work of civil...
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EDRi launches new resource to document abuses and support a full ban on spyware in Europe
Spyware continues to spread across Europe despite years of scandals and undisputable evidence of fundamental rights violations. As the European Commission remains inactive, civil society, journalists and some...
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CNAF’s discriminatory scoring algorithm: 10 new organisations join the case before the Conseil d’État in France
10 organisation, including EDRi, have joined an ongoing coalition effort to challenge the discriminatory algorithms used by the family branch of the French welfare system (CNAF). In the...
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Fighting for algorithmic justice: lessons learned in working closely with affected people
Bits of Freedom shares lessons learned while working on “Amsterdam Top400”, an invasive municipality project which involved the use of predictive policing and led to unwanted interference in...
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President’s veto further delays the implementation of the DSA in Poland
Poland is among the last EU member states to implement the Digital Service Act. After two years of negotiations between the government and civil actors – led by...
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New research reveals how Snapchat uses notifications to manipulate users
A new study by Bits of Freedom shows that Snapchat sends users misleading notifications. This is banned under the Digital Services Act which prohibits misleading and manipulative design...
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Getting off US tech: a guide
Disconnect by Paris Marx
Not sure what your new year resolution should be? Why not kick off 2026 by breaking up with exploitative US tech services? This blog lays out easily accessible and navigable alternatives for the most used tech services and platforms to start your journey. Explore the guide.
What Ireland’s data center crisis means for the EU’s AI sovereignty plans
Louis Boyd-Madsen for Tech Policy Press
Ireland is now home to one of the highest concentrations of data centers in the world, mostly clustered around Dublin. What began as a low-profile expansion has reshaped the country’s energy system, diverted grid capacity from public infrastructure, and increased dependence on fossil fuels. As the EU moves to triple its data center capacity under the AI Continent Action Plan, the pressures already destabilising Ireland’s grid offer a preview of what the continent may soon face. Read the article.
This reporting was published in collaboration with AlgorithmWatch and supported by the EDRi, European Center for Non-For-Profit Law (ECNL), and Lighthouse Reports’ investigative journalism & civil society collaboration grants.
Not an impasse: child safety, privacy, and healing together
Kate Sim at the Chaos Communication Congress 2025
From the EU’s “Chat Control” to the UK’s age verification, there is a growing legislative momentum to regulate the Internet in the name of protecting children. The monstrosity of child sexual abuse looms large in shaping how policymakers, advocates, and the public understand the problem area of and propose solutions for detecting, reporting, and removing harmful/illegal content. Children’s safety and adults’ privacy are thus pitted against each other, deadlocked into an impasse. As technologists deeply concerned with safety and privacy, where do we go from here? In her presentation at the 39th Chaos Communication Congress, researcher Kate Sim unpacks the impasse and lays the path forward. Watch the presentation.
How Wikipedia will survive in the age of AI
The online, collectively created encyclopedia has been a cornerstone of the internet decades, but as generative AI started flooding every platform with AI-generated slop over the last couple of years, Wikipedia’s governance model, editing process, and dedication to citing reliable sources has emerged as one of the most reliable and resilient models we have. And yet, as successful as the model is, it’s almost never replicated. In this episode, the Wikimedia Foundation’s chief technology and product officer Selena Deckelmann explains how she helps manage one of the most visited sites in the world in the age of generative AI. Listen the episode.
EVENTS
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Political Tech Summit
The Political Tech Summit is organised by Partisan, a Berlin-based hub for political professionals working at the intersection of tech, campaigning, and democracy. Through events, research, and community-building,...
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Data Privacy Day
Data Privacy Day is an annual event organized by the Restena Foundation and the Digital Learning Hub – under the umbrella of Cybersecurity Luxembourg – in the framework...
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EU Open Source Policy Summit 2026
The 2026 edition of the EU Open Source Policy Summit will bring together leaders from the public and private sectors to focus on one clear proposition: open source...
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The DSA and Platform Regulation Conference 2026
The conference will reflect on the DSA and European platform regulation, including in its broader legal and political context, under the overall theme of platform governance and democracy.
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The Palestine Digital Activism Forum (PDAF)
The PDAF aims to provide a platform to discuss the challenges that Palestinians face the Palestinian civil society to protect Palestinian digital rights and digital activists working on...
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RightsCon 2026
Each year, RightsCon convenes business leaders, policymakers, general counsels, government representatives, technologists, academics, journalists, and human rights advocates from around the world to tackle pressing issues at the...
JOBS
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Logos is hiring for a Campaign Director
Logos is a movement supporting the development of the decentralised web. Logos technologies lay the foundations for a freer internet upon which communities can evolve into network states....
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7amleh is hiring for a Programs Manager
7amleh - The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media is a non-profit organization that advocates for Palestinian digital rights. 7amleh’s mission is to create a safe,...
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noyb is hiring for a Data Protection Lawyer
Noyb pursues strategic and effective enforcement by thoroughly analyzing and prioritizing privacy violations, identifying the legal weak spots of these cases and litigating them with the best possible...
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Mozilla is hiring for a Senior Integrated Marketing Manager
Mozilla Foundation is committed to an internet that promotes civil discourse, human dignity, and individual expression. To an internet that catalyzes collaboration among diverse communities working together for...
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Big Brother Watch is looking for a Advocacy Manager
Big Brother Watch is a UK civil liberties campaign group fighting for a free future. Determined to reclaim our privacy and defend freedoms at this time of enormous...
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WHAT TO FIX is hiring for a Policy Manager
WHAT TO FIX is a global accelerator of evidence-based tech accountability advocacy, working to move the conversation beyond problems and into actionable diagnoses and solutions.
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SUPERRR Lab is hiring for a Finance Manager
SUPERRR Lab is a feminist organization and network that operates in spaces where technology and society intersect and in all fields in which technology affects equity and diversity...
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Open Rights Group is hiring for a Pre-Crime Programme Manager
Founded in 2005, Open Rights Group (ORG) is a UK-based digital rights organisation that campaigns to protect our rights to privacy and free speech online.