2021: Looking back at digital rights in the year of resilience

We started 2021, hoping to leave the tremendously challenging year of 2020 behind. The Covid-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on our societies, causing unprecedented harm to people and economies. If 2020 was the year of the pandemic shock, 2021 was the year of resilience. We had to learn to live in a constant uncertainty of what it would take to keep defending human rights: Could we work and walk down the streets without being constantly surveilled? Would efforts to tackle disinformation distort legitimate content, or would they bring down Big Tech instead? Will 2022 be 2021 2.0? 

Human rights winning in court

In 2021, the EDRi network worked tirelessly to protect everyone’s human rights in an ever-more digitalised world. EDRi member Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte e.V (GFF) kicked off the year with successful litigation against the surveillance of refugees’ private mobile phone data by the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. EDRi’s Polish member, Panoptykon, is citing the Warsaw District Court interim ruling in the case “SIN against Facebook” as their highlight as the Court ruled that Facebook must refrain from deleting SIN’s posts for the duration of the trial. And in Austria, Noyb fought against systematic tracking of people in Android phones, launched 500 GDPR complaints against cookie banner terror and data retention.

No faces left to hack

In 2021, EDRi and EDRi members – including Access Now, Panoptykon Foundation and Bits of Freedom – have shared successes in their advocacy on the AIA pushing for strong red lines in the upcoming AI Regulation and a ban on biometrics mass surveillance practices. Thanks to our joint efforts we successfully put legal limits and a so-called prohibition on biometric mass surveillance as legitimate topics on the EU’s agenda. We had the explicit support of 62 MEPs for our call to ban biometric mass surveillance practices and brought together 61 civil society organisations to demand AI red lines. An example of our achievement is an amendment calling for the ban of biometric mass surveillance that was supported by a total of 280 MEPs. We have emphasised the need for groups representing the most marginalised and AI-affected in our society to be actively included in the policy-making process.

Furthermore, EDRi’s work and position contributed to the EU privacy regulators’, EDPS-EDPB, joint opinion, calling for a ban on the use of AI for automated recognition of human features in publicly accessible spaces, and some other uses of AI that can lead to discrimination. Later in 2021, we impacted the AI and Criminal Law report of the European Parliament: EDRi-led coalition activities contributed to a full, strong report being adopted in Plenary. EDRi led a coalition of 42 organisations in that push and managed to change some political group’s positions and final vote. Also, EDRi joined 178 organisations in a global call to ban biometric surveillance, and we launched our first European Citizens Initiative (ECI) to ban facial recognition and other forms of biometrics mass surveillance, signed by over 64,000 people. Finally, before the end of the year, 119 civil society groups called to put human rights first in the AI Act.

We also directly contributed to a series of national-level successes on biometric mass surveillance:

• Portugal removed a provision from a national law that would have legalised biometric mass surveillance
  
• Italy passed a moratorium on public facial recognition
• Serbia withdrew a law that would have legalised biometric mass surveillance
  
• The German coalition government publicly supported a Europe-wide ban on biometric mass surveillance
  
• We are also supporting Belgian MPs to table a moratorium on the use of biometric mass surveillance technologies

Taking our power back from Big Tech

The Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) were the main focus of our work on platform regulation. We explained why the DMA had to do more than originally proposed, we published our report on surveillance-based advertising and another one on the discriminatory effects of that same industry, and our member published their investigations on how Facebook’s practices exploit people’s mental vulnerabilities. We proposed four key measures, then some more ideas, and then our views on 2,297 amendments in the DSA to fight Big Tech’s power. As of result of all of this work, the DMA and DSA Reports were strengthened in regards to keeping the prohibition of monitoring obligations by companies and advanced people’s rights. However, there is still work to be done to make those two pieces of legislation as strong as they should be in the coming months. That’s why EDRi launched its Platform Power campaign, aiming to create the conditions for a democratic, fair and open internet for a just society by taking our power back from Big Tech.

People are welcomed, border tech to control them not

We warned against the surveillance of people on the move via the Eurodac database and the surveillance of asylum seekers and fought against racism in AI and against border tech experiments. We also challenged the expansion of police surveillance in the Prüm framework and in the Europol mandate.

Keeping private things private

There have been many cases (e.g. 1,2) in which the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) said that mass data retention is illegal and in addition to that, EDRi’s member Privacy International won against the UK mass surveillance regime in a landmark case before the European Court of Human Rights.

We drastically improved personal data protection in the EU digital covid certificate.

Chat control legislation was one of our concerns during the entire year, and we explained the risks of such an approach to derogate protections of the ePrivacy legislation that was blocked until September 2021. Companies would now be officially allowed to scan your private communications. Thankfully, EDRi’s efforts led to the inclusion of a number of safeguards in an otherwise very problematic Chat Control legislation, one that would probably not hold up if challenged in courts. The Apply iSpy attempts, blocked after a significant backlash from users, NGOs, and privacy experts brought the problem of scanning of devices to everyone’s attention.

Access Now kept keeping the General Data Protection (GDPR) in good shape and published a report explaining where the legislation fell short and how to improve it while we understood the need to build Data Commons.

Sadly, in April European Parliament adopted more online censorship powers against “terrorist” content, legislation that had a copyright Directive flavour.

Strengthening the network

Ideas and proposals from the network health and governance working groups have had different levels of implications for the network. In April, the EDRi network welcomed one new member, La Quadrature Du Net, increasing EDRi’s coverage and presence in France. Finally, we continued building the conditions to decolonise the digital rights field together with the Digital Freedom Fund, worked together with allies in the Digital Dignity coalition and stood up for Romani rights.

During yet another difficult year under a global pandemic, we are proud of the impact and contribution we achieved in Europe and beyond to promote and advance digital rights, social, racial, climate and economic justice Next year has set new challenges for digital rights as we will face a key vote on the Digital Services Act, attempts to break encryption, suggestions to use AI “innovation” against marginalised groups and push to make law enforcement agencies unaccountable. We cannot win these battles alone: that’s why we invite you to join us at the 10th-anniversary edition of Privacy Camp where we will collectively articulate strategic ways forward for the advancement of human rights in the digital society.

Image credit: Erik Eastman / Unsplash

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