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Reckless social media law threatens freedom of expression in Germany
At the end of March 2017, with Federal elections on the horizon, the German Justice Minister Heiko Maas proposed a law on ill-defined “social networks”. Minister Maas has proposed the law which places a variety of obligations on the companies, in the apparent hope that this will lead profit-motivated companies to take over private censorship […]
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ENDitorial: Transparency and law-making on EU copyright – mutually exclusive?
Transparency should be a core principle for an open democracy. According to the European Union (EU) founding treaties, in order to have a democratic decision-making process, the EU institutions “shall maintain an open, transparent and regular dialogue with representative associations and civil society”. However, by following the legislative process on the copyright directive, one can […]
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Denmark: Weakening the oversight of intelligence services
A draft law to amend the data protection provisions of the law on the oversight of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) was submitted for public consultation in September 2016. In their consultation responses, several NGOs including EDRi member IT-Pol Denmark, as well as the Danish Intelligence Oversight Board (TET) criticised the proposal. The […]
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What to do with the online platforms – the academics point of view
The rise of “platform economy” with rapid growth of online intermediary platforms, such as Airbnb, Uber, Amazon Marketplace, and also dating, gaming and other services is bringing new challenges not only for existing business models, but also for European legislation. In a meeting of Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) Committee Working Group on the […]
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Social media companies launch upload filter to combat “terrorism and extremism”
A database set up jointly by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube aims to identify “terrorist and radicalising” content automatically and to remove it from these platforms.
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UK government attacks encryption … again
In the aftermath of the attack in London in March 2017, the UK government has, again, indicated that it wants to force companies to weaken encryption. The government wants to be able to access messages sent via services that use end-to-end encryption. The Home Secretary Amber Rudd stated on BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show that it […]
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EDRi @RightsCon 2017 – You cannot miss us!
EDRi member Access Now is bringing the sixth edition of RightsCon, the world’s leading digital rights event, to Brussels. We are happy to announce that EDRi’s presence at the conference will be particularly strong this year – our members will be organising a record number of sessions, and our team will participate in an impressive […]
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EU moves one step closer to the world’s worst internet filtering law
In September 2016, the European Commission proposed legislation that would require the constant monitoring and filtering of virtually everything that is uploaded to the internet in Europe. Under the extreme rules proposed by the Commission in the Copyright Directive, uploads to the internet would need to be scanned to assess if any photo, video or […]
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Hakuna Metadata – Exploring the browsing history
Metadata is data about data. In an e-mail, the data is the content of the e-mail and metadata is the information about the e-mail. So, it covers information like who is it from or who sent it, the date and time, the subject, network information etc. When we are browsing the internet, data is represented […]
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Multilateral Investment Court System does not deliver equal justice
On 15 March 2017, the public consultation on “options for a multilateral reform of investment dispute resolution” launched by the European Commission (EC) was concluded. EDRi responded to the consultation, in line with the response to the previous Investment-to-State-Dispute-Settlement (ISDS) consultation and our work on trade and fundamental rights. Our view is that the Multilateral Investment Court […]
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Human rights court: Website not liable for anonymous comment
On 9 March 2017, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) published its unanimous ruling in the case of Pihl v. Sweden. It declared that a non-profit association was not liable for an anonymous defamatory comment posted on its blog. The plaintiff Rolf Anders Daniel Pihl had made a civil claim against the small non-profit […]
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Switzerland: Blocking of gambling sites – gambling with human rights
On 1 March 2017, the Swiss National Council debated the proposal to regulate online gambling, and approved it. The consequences of the law go beyond gambling regulations, since they amount to censorship, blocking of content, and restricting the free and open internet.
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