Our work
EDRi is the biggest European network defending rights and freedoms online. We work to to challenge private and state actors who abuse their power to control or manipulate the public. We do so by advocating for robust and enforced laws, informing and mobilising people, promoting a healthy and accountable technology market, and building a movement of organisations and individuals committed to digital rights and freedoms in a connected world.
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ENDitorial: Consumer protection MEPs launch attack on consumers
Documents leaked by Julia Reda, a Member the European Parliament (MEP) show that parliamentarians on the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO), whose job it is to protect consumers and improve legal consistency in the EU, are planning an assault on citizens’ fundamental rights, legal coherence and even the ultimate authority of […]
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The EU must take action to protect whistleblowers
The right of citizens to report wrongdoing is a natural extension of the right of freedom of expression, and is linked to the principles of transparency and integrity. – Transparency International Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden are some of the most famous whistleblowers, thanks to their huge impact on the protection of human rights. However, there […]
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Romanian Parliament: EU Copyright reform does more harm than good
While the European Parliament is in the middle of its discussions about the European Commission’s proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, similar discussions are taking place in a number of Member State parliaments. The results of these conversations will influence the position that Member States take in the discussions in […]
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Irish police phone tapping undermines citizens’ rights
An Garda Síochána, the Irish police force has fallen, yet again, under public scrutiny for privacy violations of innocent citizens. An investigation by the Irish Independent newspaper has found that members of the public had their phones tapped without proper justification. The widespread phone tapping was revealed after a senior officer tried to highlight his […]
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EU action needed: German NetzDG draft threatens freedom of expression
On 22 May 2017 six civil society and industry associations sent an open letter to eight EU Commissioners asking to take action against the German bill on “Enforcement on Social Networks”, the “NetzDG”.
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Looking back on our 2016 victories
Technological advancements in the digital world create new opportunities but also new challenges for human rights. Especially in the past year, the fear of extremism on the one side and extreme measures on the other resulted in the desire for swift political action and made defending citizen’s rights and freedoms online a difficult task. In […]
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ENDitorial: Commissioners’ oath – a broken promise on fundamental rights
On 3 May, 2010, the entire European Commission travelled to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Strasbourg to, for the first time in the history of the Union, take an oath that included a solemn declaration to “respect the Treaties and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in […]
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UK Digital Economy Act: Millions of websites could be blocked
The Digital Economy Act has become law in the United Kingdom. This wide-ranging law has several areas of concern for digital rights, and could seriously affect privacy and freedom of expression of internet users. One of the main concerns is that it will compel legal pornographic websites to verify the age of their users. The British […]
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ALTwitter – profiling with metadata
When we are sharing links, events or ideas through social media, we leave behind a trace of metadata: when and how often, which days of the week, in which language, using which hashtag, linking to which users or websites, and so on. Those details might not say much when we look at each piece of […]
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Reclaim the net! Copyright and online freedoms at re:publica17
It is hard to count how many times we have been saying that the current European copyright regime is outdated. Sometimes the focus is on the negatives: what it should not be like. The ongoing copyright reform reinforces that tendency with proposals such as the content filter. However, at re:publica17, an annual gathering of media […]
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Big Data for Big Impact – but not only a positive one
Technology has changed and keeps dramatically changing our everyday life by transforming the human species to advanced networked societies. To celebrate this digital revolution, 17 May is dedicated to the “World Telecommunication and Information Society Day” (WTISD-17). The theme for this year’s celebration is “Big Data for Big Impact”. Not so surprisingly, the buzzword “big […]
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AVMSD: European Parliament set to vote whether it’s allowed to vote
On 18 May 2017, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) will vote on whether they want to work on the Audiovisual Media Services Directive reform now, or let a handful of MEPs represent over 500 million EU citizens in the so-called “trilogue” negotiations between the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of the EU, representing the […]
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