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EU Commissioner on ISDS consultation: “An outright attack”
The European Commission’s public consultation on investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement (TTIP) drew nearly 150 000 responses. The Commission was struck by the demonstration of citizen engagement that the consultation raised, and the massive number of responses paralysed the IT system of the Commission. “We got almost 100,000 […]
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Russia and Austria take action against use of Tor
Russian government is offering 3,9 million roubles (approximately 85 000 Euro) for a way to identify users transmitting data over the anonymous web browsing system Tor. The special technology and communications group of the interior ministry published the tender on the government procurement website in July, offering the reward for “research work, Tor cipher”. The […]
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Summary report of the responses to the copyright public consultation
On 23 July 2014 the European Commission Directorate General Internal Market and Services (DG MARKT) published Summary Report of the Responses to the public consultation on the review of the EU copyright rules. The consultation held between 5 December 2013 and 5 March 2014 was part of the European Commission’s effort to review and modernise […]
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EDRi’s response to FCC consultation on net neutrality
The US Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) consultation on net neutrality “Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet” initially had a deadline of 15 July, which was subsequently extended due to the huge volume of responses (reportedly above one million). Read EDRi’ response to the consultation here: In Europe, the Council is now now edging towards a […]
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EDRi’s response to the ISDS consultation
The European Commission’s public “consultation” on investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement (TTIP) drew over 100 000 responses by its deadline 13 July. To help people respond the consultation EDRi published an answering guide and an online form. Our lobbycharter website also explains briefly the principal problems of ISDS. […]
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Almost one in five sites blocked by filters in the UK
EDRi member Open Rights Group’s (ORG) Blocked project reveals that nearly one in five of the most popular websites are blocked by at least one of the “voluntary” filters implemented by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the United Kingdom when strict filtering settings are used. The UK ISPs filter and block the sites by default. […]
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Code Red, global initiative to support a reform of security services
More than two-dozen civil society activists from fourteen countries have joined the steering group of an ambitious global initiative to accelerate police and security services accountability. The project, Code Red, was conceived during the preparation of a report “A Crisis of Accountability” that was published in June 2014 on developments in the twelve months since […]
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Germany asks CIA chief to leave the country over spying scandal
On 10 July 2014, the German government told the senior CIA representative in Berlin, known as the station chief, to leave the country over spying allegations. The decision came one day after German authorities searched an apartment and an office of a German military intelligence official alleged to have been working for the US intelligence. […]
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Slovenia: Data retention unconstitutional, deletion of data ordered
The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia abrogated the data retention provisions of the Act on Electronic Communications (ZEKom-1) in its judgement U-I-65/13-19 of 3 July 2014 following the constitutional request lodged by the Information Commissioner in March 2013 and ECJ judgment of 8 April 2014 in Joined Cases C-293/12 and C-594/12. The Court […]
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ENDitorial: Child abuse online: Is ignorance the best policy?
Why is online child abuse so unimportant that, politically, it does not need laws? Why is online child abuse so unimportant that the policies that are proposed to address this problem are never subject to review to test their effectiveness? Why is online child abuse protection so unimportant that policies that are implemented are never […]
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ENDitorial: Commission Communication on IP Enforcement
On 1 July, 2014, the European Commission launched an oddly-named Communication entitled “Towards a renewed consensus on the enforcement of intellectual property rights.” It is good to see the Commission being ambitious, but renewing something that never existed appears to be quite challenging. The document opens by referring to the impressive statistic that a “recent […]
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UK: Emergency legislation on data retention pushed through
Faced with a lawsuit from NGOs challenging the legality of its data retention regulations (which are based on the data retention directive the European Court of Justice found unlawful in April 2014), the UK government brought in emergency legislation, a Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill (DRIP), to not only declare data retention to be […]
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