On the ground
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EFF to Council of Europe: Flawed Cross Border Police Surveillance Treaty Needs Fixing
EDRi member Electronic Frontier Foundations (EFF) has joined European Digital Rights (EDRi), the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), and other civil society organizations in recommending 20 solid, comprehensive steps to strengthen human rights protections in the new cross border surveillance draft treaty that is under review by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). The recommendations aim to ensure that the draft treaty, which grants broad, intrusive police powers to access user information in criminal cross border investigations, contains a robust baseline to safeguard privacy and data protection.
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EU: €5 million for new wiretapping technologies
The European Commission has made €5 million available for research projects that aim to help law enforcement authorities maintain the ability to intercept telecommunications – something which is threatened by the adoption of new technologies such as 5G networks and “edge computing”.
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UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal finds the regime for bulk communications data to be incompatible with EU law
The UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal issued a declaration in EDRi member Privacy International's challenge to the bulk communications data regime, finding UK legislation to be incompatible with EU law.
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Facebook’s dominance makes it difficult to question the truth
What we as a society understand as true is changeable, and questioning the truth can only be done with a healthy public debate. But the dominance of the platforms that facilitate our public debate makes difficult.
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The deterrent effect of the Julian Hessenthaler case: Criminal prosecution must not lead to diminished freedom of opinion
At the start of the trial against security adviser Julian Hessenthaler, who played a key role in the making of the so-called Ibiza video, 15 Austrian and international human rights organisations express their concern that his excessive criminal prosecution could – intentionally – have a deterring effect on future sources or whistleblowers and the exercise of freedom of opinion, freedom of the press and freedom of information. Julian Hessenthaler has been in custody since the end of 2020 (at first awaiting extradition, now awaiting trial) because of drug- and document-related charges against him.
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Member in the Spotlight: Xnet
EDRi's member Xnet is an activist project working and proposing advanced solutions in fields related to digital rights and networked democracy.
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NGO demands disclosure of A1 Telekom Austria Group’s entanglements in Belarus
EDRi's member epicenter.works protested in front of the A1 Telekom Austria Group’s building in June 2021 to raise awareness of the involvement of the partially state-owned company in the internet shutdowns in Belarus that unfolded around the controversial election of the long-term dictator Lukaschenka. The protest was accompanied by attacks by the company against the non-profit NGO.
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New EDRi report reveals depths of biometric mass surveillance in Germany, the Netherlands and Poland
In a new research report, EDRi reveals the shocking extent of unlawful biometric mass surveillance practices in Germany, the Netherlands and Poland which are taking over our public spaces like train stations, streets, and shops. The EU and its Member States must act now to set clear legal limits to these practices which create a state of permanent monitoring, profiling and tracking of people.
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La Quadrature du Net asks for renewed support to challenge TERREG in France
In light of the European Parliament's vote on the Regulation to prevent the dissemination of said “terrorist content”, EDRi observer La Quadrature du Net (LQDN) sheds light on some of the most concerning provisions which have to be addressed before the final adoption of the regulation.
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Member in the Spotlight: Alternatif Bilişim Derneği
Alternatif Bilişim Derneği emphasises that technological work and algorithms have the most adverse impact on its users; thus the critical public sphere must also be created by users themselves, in a distributed, decentralised fashion. In their country, they want a political order that respects human rights and does not enforce auto-censorship on its citizens.
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When the police’s IT-systems are not in order, everyone loses
Without the trust of citizens, the police cannot do their job properly. That is why it is important that the police are extremely careful with citizens' data. But an analysis by EDRi member Bits of Freedom shows that of all 36 'mission critical' systems of the police, not one complies with the rules on privacy and information security.
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IuRe crowdfunds to end data retention in the Czech Republic
The digital-legal organisation, EDRi member, Iuridicum Remedium is crowdfunding to take the Czech government to court to end the widespread collection of metadata from telephone and online communication of every user in the country (so-called data retention). The case willrely on a ruling by the EU Court of Justice, which declared that the large-scale collection of metadata was inadmissible, for the third time last October. Crowdfunding a legal case in the public‘s interest is an alternative to dysfunctional class actions.
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