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EC wants to add facial recognition to transnational databases
On 4 May 2016, the European Commission (EC) published a proposal to recast the EURODAC Regulation. The European Automated Fingerprint Identification System (EURODAC) was initially introduced in 2003 to establish an EU asylum fingerprint database, and to share this information with national law enforcement authorities and Europol. According to this proposal, if a person applies […]
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Big Brother Awards Germany 2016
The annual gala for the German Big Brother Awards (BBA), organised by EDRi member Digitalcourage, was held on 22 April 2016 in Bielefeld, Germany. English-language coverage of the event was stepped up this year. While English translations of most of the laudations have been available on the website in previous years, this year Digitalcourage’s interpreter […]
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Advocate General: Dynamic IP address can be personal data
On 12 May Manuel Campos Sánchez-Bordona, Advocate General (AG) of the European Court of Justice (CJEU), gave his opinion in the Case Patrick Breyer against the Federal Republic of Germany, C-582/14. Patrick Breyer sued the German government for violating his right to data protection by storing the data about him visiting websites of the German […]
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52 NGOs ask the Council to protect journalists and whistleblowers
On 13 May 2016, EDRi and 51 other civil society organisations sent an open letter (pdf) to the Heads of State and Government of the European Union to amend the draft Trade Secrets Directive, to protect our rights and freedoms, including those of journalists and whistleblowers. This call for change is of utmost importance. For […]
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Press Release: Dutch government prohibits price discrimination for internet access
The Dutch parliament has approved a proposal from the government to prohibit online price discrimination (“zero rating”). Zero rating is when telecom operators do not charge customers for data used by specific applications or internet services but charge them for others. The Netherlands’ vote is in accordance with the country’s history of upholding strong net […]
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European Digital Rights at re:publica 2016
Last week, the re:publica, “Europe’s most exciting conference on Internet and society”, took place in Berlin. EDRi’s members and observers were out in force and participated in the 10th anniversary of the re:publica. We’ve collected all talks by our network for you (in chronological order): Fight for your digital rights (in German) Link to re:publica […]
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EU Trade Secrets Directive: A sad day for the freedom of expression
On 14 April, the European Parliament adopted the deeply flawed EU Trade Secrets Directive. This is a sad state of affairs, that does not reflect well on the quality of the EU legislature, both on process and on substance. On process, it started with Commission-sponsored research that was deeply flawed and misleading. At no point […]
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CETA will undermine EU Charter of Fundamental Rights
In February 2016, the European Commission and Canadian government published the final draft text of the EU – Canada trade agreement (CETA), prior to its approval or rejection by the Council of the European Union, European Parliament and, possibly, national parliaments. In October 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) invalidated the […]
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EUIPO publishes final report about ”Youth and Intellectual Property”
(Update on 6 June 2016: We corrected some quotes in this article which referred to a different but related report) On 6 April, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO, formerly known as OHIM) published its report on “Youth and IP”, which followed the 2013 study on “European Citizens and Intellectual Property: Perception, Awareness and […]
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The lobby-tomy 6: Not in my backyard
Something you’ll hear in policy debates on the environment: windmills are a great idea and obviously good for the environment, but we don’t want them in our backyard. This argument doesn’t just apply to the debate on the environment, but apparently also in the debate on privacy protection. Representatives from industry speak convincingly about what […]
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Please sue us
Each of the Member States of the European Union is required to incorporate European directives into national legislation. If a Member State does not obey this obligation, the European Commission can sue this country in the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). But what actions can a country take if such directives force […]
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Dutch dragnet surveillance bill leaked
On 29 April, the final text for the Dutch dragnet surveillance bill was leaked. It turns out that Minister of the Dutch Interior Ronald Plasterk is still bent on granting the secret services the power to carry out bulk interception of innocent citizens’ communications.
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