EDRi receives a 15Keuros donation from XS4ALL and its customers

In the beginning of May 2008, a critical network error caused an Internet
blackout for a great number of people in the Netherlands. The problem,
by some said to be the biggest in internet history in Holland, caused
over a hundred thousand DSL lines to be disconnected for up to four
days, among them many subscribers to Dutch Internet provider XS4ALL.

After the problem had been found and fixed, XS4ALL sent its customers a
letter to apologise and offered them a present to make up for all the
inconvenience the problem had caused. Since freedom and privacy
have been key values for XS4ALL ever since its beginning in 1993,
customers could also, instead of the present, choose to have a donation
made in their name to one of three organisations: EDRi, Press Now or
Amnesty International. This has resulted in a donation of 15 262,50 euro to
EDRi. A nice outcome of such an unpleasant incident!

EDRi would like to express its thanks to XS4ALL and its customers for
this donation. The association is proud that it has been selected as
beneficiary by XS4ALL and its customers, together with only two other
prestigious organizations. This reveals the importance of the digital
rights issues, and acknowledges the work of EDRi since its creation in
June 2002.

Recent examples for issues EDRi is working on are the mandatory
retention of communication traffic data, the EU-USA agreement on the
access to Passenger Name Records (PNR) and the Prüm treaty on the
exchange of biometric data amongst EU member states. But also
technological developments like the upcoming widespread
deployment of RFID applications demand attention with regard to threats
for data protection, individuals privacy and security.

EDRi has observer status to the World Intellectual Property Organization
and to Council of Europe Group of specialists on human rights in the
information society, and is a member of the European Commission Expert
Group on RFID. EDRi members have played a key role in civil society
participation to the United Nations World Summit on the Information
Society (WSIS), most notably with the organization and leadership of two
civil society caucuses, on human rights in the information society and
on privacy and security issues. They currently are among the main civil
society actors in WSIS follow-up process, especially the United Nations
Internet Governance Forum.

In a context where civil liberties are more and more threatened in the
digital world, EDRi will use this generous support from XS4ALL and its
customers to pursue its actions and to set up new projects and campaigns.

Individual donations are an important source of funding for EDRi that
are also crucial to enable our regular activities like the publication
of our bi-weekly newsletter EDRi-gram while maintaining our independent
position.

If you also want to support our activities, please direct your donations
to EDRi’s bank account at the KBC Bank Auderghem-Centre, Chaussée de
Wavre 1662, 1160 Bruxelles, Belgium

Name: European Digital Rights AISBL
Bank account nr.: 733-0215021-02
IBAN: BE32 7330 2150 2102
BIC: KREDBEBB

For more information please consult http://www.edri.org/about/sponsoring
where you also find information on how to get in contact with us.

XS4ALL announcement (only in Dutch, 07.07.2008)
http://www.xs4all.nl/nieuws/bericht.php?msect=nieuws&id=992&taal=nl