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EU decides that Google is not a search engine
The European Union has adopted legislation which establishes that Google is not a search engine. After two years of legislative process and negotiations between the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, the final text would also mean that Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckgo are also not search engines. As part of the broad […]
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Press Release: Save the Internet – Final consultation to save the open Internet in Europe
The future of the open and competitive Internet in Europe (so-called “net neutrality”) will be decided in Europe in the coming months. After regulators in India and the United States ruled that Internet companies are not permitted to undermine innovation, competition and free speech, now it is Europe’s turn. Failure in the EU will have […]
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Lots to like in Advocate General’s opinion on free WiFi & copyright
Last week, Advocate General Szpunar published his opinion in the McFadden-case before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). The facts of the case In 2010, Berlin businessman Tobias McFadden was offering free, non-password protected WiFi to his customers. Sony Music claimed that the network was being used to infringe their copyrighted material, […]
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Loopholes creeping into the Italian proposal on net neutrality
The Italian legislative proposal on net neutrality is currently being discussed by the Italian Parliament. Notwithstanding general provisions on the equal treatment of traffic for Internet access services, its amended text contains loopholes and provisions that raise concerns. The text, now containing references to EU Regulation 2120/2015 on net neutrality (and mobile roaming), generally fails […]
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Danish government postpones plans to re-introduce session logging
When the EU data retention Directive was transposed into national law after its adoption in 2006, Denmark implemented one of the most excessive transpositions into national law. Danish Internet service providers (ISPs) were required to retain session information (source and destination IP addresses, port numbers, session type e.g. TCP or UDP, and timestamp) for every […]
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EPIC Intervenes in Privacy Case at European Court of Human Rights
EPIC filed a third-party intervention with the European Court of Human Rights in a significant case about mass surveillance and transatlantic co-operation between intelligence agencies. The 10 Human Rights Organizations and Others v the UK (24960/15) case involves a challenge brought by NGOs from all around the world including Privacy International, the American Civil Liberties […]
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Data protection bill in Turkish Parliament
Turkey does not have a data protection law, but since 2003 there have been numerous attempts to enact legislation in this area. The drafts of such bills have been criticised for not being in accordance with the contemporary approach to data protection. For example, the 2013 draft envisaged the establishment of a seven-member Data Protection […]
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EDRi’s input on violent extremism for UN Human Rights Commissioner
EDRi firmly condemns the Brussels terror attacks as well as other acts of violence and terrorism around the world. While acknowledging the importance of combating terrorism and violent extremism, EDRi is concerned about the disproportionate and misguided responses by certain UN countries in pursuit of this aim. In this context, the United Nations (UN) Resolution […]
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The lobby-tomy 3: who are lobbying?
Did you know that there are 340,000 dentists in Europe? And that they lobby about privacy? Who else lobbies? How do parties/groups create coalitions to persuade policy makers? What’s the mayor of Amsterdam doing in Brussels? In this blog on the privacy lobby we describe the different parties that are lobbying. The new European data […]
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Transatlantic coalition of civil society groups: Privacy Shield is not enough – renegotiation is needed
Today, EDRi joined forces with other 26 civil society organisations to send a letter to European leaders reviewing the “Privacy Shield” data-transfer agreement with a very specific message: this arrangement is not enough. The Privacy Shield is intended to allow companies to share data about customers across the Atlantic. Unfortunately, the Privacy Shield fails to […]
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UK’s mass surveillance law being rushed through legislative process
Last week, the UK government published the Investigatory Powers Bill, a new surveillance law that has been heavily criticised by privacy and free speech activists, the technology industry, lawyers and academics. A draft version of the Bill was published in November 2015 and scrutinised by three parliamentary committees. Between them, they made 123 recommendations for […]
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ENDitorial: PNR – political finger-pointing, no viable legislation
The EU Passenger Name Record Directive (or ‘PNR Directive’) would require the storage of travel data for airline passengers, ostensibly for law enforcement purposes. The specialist European Parliament committee responsible for the proposal rejected it in 2013 but adopted the proposal in 2015, following the terrorist attacks. The European Parliament recently decided not to schedule […]
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