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Poland: New project on public institutions’ surveillance practices
Every year more and more public money is invested in surveillance technologies – everything from drones and video surveillance to data mining software for public administration. Recently, the Polish government announced a new programme of co-financing surveillance cameras in the schools. Why do governments spends public funds on surveillance without justifying such investments or evaluating […]
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Finland: Web service to request verifying of secret registry data
EDRi-member Effi ry has launched a web service for citizens to request the data protection authorities to verify that any records in various law enforcement and secret services registries are filed according to the relevant regulations. Previously, this kind of request required detailed knowledge of relevant registers, leaving the process practically unavailable for the majority […]
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Samaritans RADAR monitors tweets
On 29 October, the Samaritans, a suicide prevention and counselling charity registered in England and Wales, launched an application that monitor people’s public Tweets. The aim of the application is to identify a potentially suicidal Twitter user and notify her/his followers (who are using the necessary software) or potentially get her/him in touch with Samaritans. […]
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EDRi needs an intern!
European Digital Rights (EDRi) is a not-for-profit association of 34 digital civil rights organisations from 19 European countries. Our objectives are to promote, protect and uphold civil rights in the field of information and communication technology, such as the right to privacy, freedom of expression, access to information and the promotion of civil society. We […]
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France to follow Turkey’s lead on lawless Internet censorship
Despite many setbacks, bad publicity, budget cuts and a change of government, France is persisting with its Hadopi, a “three strikes law” and government agency to enforce copyright laws and fight online “piracy”. Even more worrying, the country’s Minister of Culture is now making moves to curb online rights even further. In the past years, the […]
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Macedonian investigative magazine fined in defamation case
On 27 September, 2014, the Skopje Court of Appeals, Macedonia, confirmed the decision of a lower court, and ordered a critical independent magazine “Fokus” to pay a nearly ten thousand euro fine to a high government official for defamation. The ruling was another setback to country’s media freedom. Sasho Mijalkov, the Director of the Security […]
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EU Parliament promises a better document register
In 2011 the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) discovered that some European Parliament decisions regarding the ratification of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) were not recorded in any known document. A hidden class of documents (“coordinators’ minutes”) seemed to exist, but the Parliament denied their existence. The FFII filed a complaint with the […]
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Balancing rights (unless we are talking about copyright)
Recently Google was asked (spiced up with a threat of a 100 million dollar lawsuit) by an attorney representing “over a dozen” celebrities to take down pictures of his clients which had been hacked from their respective iCloud accounts and published in different websites. Google quickly reacted removing those pictures from its blogging and social […]
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Google pushes forward with its voluntary pro-copyright policing
For the past number of years, Google has chosen to impose US copyright law on the world, completely de-indexing any website which fulfils the non-judicial criteria of a valid order under American law. Last year alone, it removed 222 000 000 links, which means 74 links per second. In addition to applying US copyright law […]
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Web-blocking in Austria – law with the law taken out
Following the European Court of Justice ruling on the UPC Telekabel v Constantin in April 2014, Austrian internet access providers have started “blocking” several websites. In the case in question, the Court established that an injunction may be imposed on an internet access provider (ISP) “prohibiting an internet service provider from allowing” its customers access […]
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ENDitorial: Malmström – Always there to protect US
Now that Commissioner Cecilia Malmström will be taking over as the EU’s Trade Commissioner, and as the Commissioner in charge of negotiating the controversial TTIP trade deal with the USA, it is a useful time to cast our minds back to her achievements as Commissioner with responsibility for Home Affairs in the European Union. Commissioner […]
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Italy: Administrative copyright enforcement unconstitutional?
Leggi l’articolo in italiano qui: https://edri.org/italia-procedimento-amministrativo-incostituzionale-sul-diritto-d-autore On 26 September 2014, an Italian regional administrative tribunal referred a question regarding the constitutionality of the administrative enforcement procedures foreseen by a new regulation on online copyright infringement to the Italian Constitutional Court. The Regulation on Online Copyright Infringement entered into force on 1 April 2014. It allows […]
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