On the ground
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Foreign authorities are banning Google and Microsoft services from schools, the Czech Republic is floundering
Jan Cibulka, a journalist for iROZHLAS and member of the Big Brother Awards CZ Jury, organised by EDRi member Iuridicum Remedium, has investigated how Czech authorities and schools are approaching the protection of privacy when using distance learning tools. Such tools send sensitive information overseas, where US law gives intelligence agencies access to it. The tools do not guarantee that children's private chats will not be accessed by, for example, teachers. While the first regional governments in Europe are developing safer alternatives, in the Czech Republic the risk assessment remains up to individual schools. In practice, they have little choice.
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Privacy Defenders: Enabling young people to defend their online privacy
EDRi member Electronic Frontier Norway (EFN) in cooperation with Croatian NGOs NUM and Politiscope will soon finish the implementation of the project Privacy Defenders, supported by the Active Citizen Fund (EEA and Norway). The project aims to build the capacities of young people from a small local community to advocate for and defend their online privacy.
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Gmail creates “Spam Emails”, despite CJEU judgment
On 24 August, EDRi member noyb.eu filed a complaint against Google with the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL). The tech giant has repeatedly ignored the European Court of Justice (CJEU) ruling on direct marketing emails and used its email platform Gmail to send unsolicited advertising emails without valid consent of the users.
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“You’ll find it on the internet.” How digitalisation impacts the lives of people whose voices often go unheard
As a rule, government and official websites make no allowances for users with special needs. At the same time, even some IT specialists prefer to use paper as an alternative. These were among the findings of a unique piece of research which was part of the Promoting Human Rights in the Digital Era project.
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WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep
In the past few years, the pandemic and the shift to working from home have bolstered the use of remote surveillance software to monitor employees. In 2020, global demand for employee monitoring software increased 108 per cent by April and 70 per cent by May 2020 compared to pre-pandemic times. At the same time, search engine queries for "How to monitor employees working from home" increased by 1,705 per cent in April and 652 per cent in May 2020 compared to the previous year.
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Good news: Dutch secret services destroy unlawfully stored information on millions of innocent citizens
The secret services store information on millions of citizens that they are no longer by law allowed to have. EDRi member Bits of Freefom filed a complaint about this with the supervisor. The supervisor stated on June 15, 2022, that the data must be destroyed.
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Challenging the use of GPS tags to monitor asylum seekers in the UK
The latest rollout of GPS tags to monitor migrants is another step in creating a 'hostile environment' for asylum seekers in the UK.
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Hooray! Bits of Freedom freed the data of millions of people from the clutches of the secret services!
The Complaints Department of the Review Committee on the Intelligence and Security Services (CTIVD), the Dutch supervisor of the secret services, ruled that EDRi member Bits of Freedom is right!
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The state of privacy at Dutch municipalities
EDRi member Bits of Freedom has done research on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)-compliance within the ten largest municipalities of the Netherlands. Unfortunately, most municipalities scored a failing grade, despite the fact that the GDPR has celebrated its fourth anniversary.
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Bits of Freedom files a complaint against intelligence services on behalf of millions of citizens
The Dutch secret services are illegally storing the data of millions of citizens. The supervisor does not have the means to do anything about this violation of the law, so EDRi member Bits of Freedom filed a formal complaint. It is high time that the secret services started to abide by the law. Our data should be removed from their servers.
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Collective complaint against the Technopolice
Today, we have come to a point where the combination of these technologies creates a state of total surveillance in our streets:CCTV everywhere, enormous police databases, facial recognition and automated detection of behavior. In order to end stop this illegal mass surveillance, LQDN is launching a collective complaint against the French Ministry of the Interior. You will find the details of their argument and procedure on plainte.technopolice.fr (in French).
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Belgium wants to ban Signal – a harbinger of European policy to come
Last week, the Belgian government launched a proposal that would ban Signal. What's going on?
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