Last-ditch attack on e-Privacy Regulation in the European Parliament

The ECR, the right-wing, Eurosceptic political group in the European Parliament has joined forces with German Conservatives, Axel Voss and Monika Hohlmeier, as well as the Danish Liberal Morten Løkkegaard to try to overturn progress made on the e-Privacy Regulation.

The Regulation applies to confidentiality of communications, online and offline tracking and device security. It has been the subject of a huge lobbying campaign by industry associations peddling a range of outlandish claims including that the Regulation would ban advertising and would even be responsible for “killing the internet” (seriously).

As the myths and mythology that Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are being confronted with every day are getting more and more ridiculous, on 24 October, we wrote to all 751 MEPs. However, to avoid the e-mail getting too long, we restricted ourselves to the six most outlandish myths:

1. that e-Privacy bans online advertising (advertising existed before online surveillance)
2. that e-Privacy is bad for democracy (tracking has manipulated elections)
3. that e-Privacy is bad for media pluralism and quality of journalism (tracking is the business model of fake news)
4. that e-Privacy prevents the fight against illegal content (the telecoms companies made this false argument about net neutrality. It wasn’t true and still isn’t)
5. that e-Privacy helps Google and Facebook (no, seriously, the lobbyists are actually saying this)
6. that we need a level playing field (actually that one is true, we need everyone to be regulated fairly)

You can read our letter here.

Tell your MEPs you want a strong e-Privacy Regulation – as agreed by the European Parliament Committee on Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE). Find your MEPs here.