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Netherlands: Sharing of travel data violated students’ privacy
It was all over the news on 22 August 2017: Translink, the company responsible for the Dutch public transport card “OV-chipkaart” had been passing student travel data to the Education Executive Agency responsible for student finance in the Netherlands (DUO). DUO uses this data to figure out whether students who claim to live on their […]
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Controversial testing of facial recognition software in Germany
At the end of August 2017, German police has been testing a facial recognition software at Südkreuz train station in Berlin. The system was tested on 300 volunteers. The goal was to evaluate the accuracy of the software in recognising and distinguishing them from the crowd – a feature that the police hopes to ultimately […]
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Winter is here
This autumn announces itself much colder and threatening for our rights and freedoms than we thought: The e-Privacy Regulation and copyright reform are the two main pieces of EU legislation that will keep the digital rights defenders of EDRi’s Brussels office busy. We will also continue our work on implementation of the General Data Protection […]
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Six states raise concerns about legality of Copyright Directive
According to a new leak, a number of EU Member States share our serious concerns about the proposal for mass surveillance and censorship of uploads to the internet in Europe, included in the European Commission’s proposal for a new copyright Directive. Those Member States seem unwilling to build a censorship machine forcing EU countries to […]
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EU decision-making is not EU administration, says EU administration
In 2016, the EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly made some recommendations to improve the transparency of the “trilogue” process. Trilogues are informal negotiations conducted between a small number of representatives of the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament and the Commission, and they are increasingly used to circumvent the traditional, treaty-based decision-making process of […]
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Member in the Spotlight: Electronic Frontier Norway
Electronic Frontier Norway is working for digital rights, such as freedom of speech, privacy, freedom from surveillance, open standards, public access to publicly funded research and data, user-controlled software and the right to copy.
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The privacy movement and dissent: Whistleblowing
This is the second blogpost of a series, originally published by EDRi member Bits of Freedom, that explains how the activists of a Berlin-based privacy movement operate, organise, and express dissent. The series is inspired by a thesis by Loes Derks van de Ven, which describes the privacy movement as she encountered it from 2013 […]
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The School of Rock(ing) EU Copyright 2017
What is the School of Rock(ing) Copyright? The European Union (EU) is currently reforming its copyright legislation. Such reforms are rare, their effects intended to last for many years, with their consequences having a direct impact on the lives of all individuals. In cooperation with Communia and Wikimedia, EDRi is organising a series of workshops […]
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Italy plans to extend telecoms data retention and increase censorship powers
On 19 July 2017, the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament approved two amendments to existing laws. One of the amendments aims at extending telecommunications data retention to six years, while the other gives Agcom, the communications regulator, powers to order takedown and blocking of online content without judicial oversight. Data retention in Italy […]
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PNR: EU Court rules that draft EU/Canada air passenger data deal is unacceptable
Today, on 26 July 2017, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) confirmed that the EU/Canada deal on collection of air travellers’ data and sharing it breaches European law. This is the third time that the European Court has ruled against arrangements for mandatory storage of personal data. This is good news for […]
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Copyright Directive discussed in Romania
On 23 June 2017, EDRi member Asociația pentru Tehnologie și Internet (ApTI) along with The National Association of Librarians and Public Libraries of Romania (ANBPR) and the Center for Independent Journalism (CJI) organised a meeting on the topic of the proposed EU Copyright Directive. Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Victor Negrescu took part in […]
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Oversight Board report: Illegal surveillance of Danish citizens
The annual report from the Danish Intelligence Oversight Board (TET) was published on 7 July 2017. Under Danish law, TET is tasked with overseeing the data collection and data processing practices of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) and the Danish Defence and Intelligence Service (DDIS). Both intelligence services operate mostly outside European Union […]
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