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: Child abuse online: Is ignorance the best policy?
Why is online child abuse so unimportant that, politically, it does not need laws? Why is online child abuse so unimportant that the policies that are proposed to address this problem are never subject to review to test their effectiveness? Why is online child abuse protection so unimportant that policies that are implemented are never […]
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ENDitorial: Commission Communication on IP Enforcement
On 1 July, 2014, the European Commission launched an oddly-named Communication entitled “Towards a renewed consensus on the enforcement of intellectual property rights.” It is good to see the Commission being ambitious, but renewing something that never existed appears to be quite challenging. The document opens by referring to the impressive statistic that a “recent […]
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UK: Emergency legislation on data retention pushed through
Faced with a lawsuit from NGOs challenging the legality of its data retention regulations (which are based on the data retention directive the European Court of Justice found unlawful in April 2014), the UK government brought in emergency legislation, a Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill (DRIP), to not only declare data retention to be […]
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Denmark about to implement a nationwide ANPR system
The Danish police is planning to implement a nationwide automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system over the next couple of years. The Danish newspaper Berlingske obtained the project description for the IT system through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, and reported about the ANPR plans. The ANPR system will consist of mobile units […]
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Poland: Secret services escape citizens’ control
Poland celebrated its 25 years of democracy recently. In those two and a half decades, among other changes, most public institutions in Poland have got more or less used to citizens’ control. It has taken years of advocacy and watchdog activity, as well as a number of court cases to decide whether a given piece […]
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Irish High Court refers the Facebook/PRISM case to the CJEU
On 18 June 2014 Ireland’s High Court referred the request to investigate Facebook’s international headquarters in Ireland over its involvement in the PRISM scandal to the European Court of Justice (CJEU). CJEU was asked to review the case and to clarify whether the social network’s actions are compatible with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. […]
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We are not accusing the German minister of interior of lying
On 30 June 2014, Germany’s Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maizière announced an initiative to help move forward the proposal for a General Data Protection Regulation. EDRi applauds this “initiative”, which comes after Germany has worked assiduously to stop progress in the Council. According to internal Council documents obtained by the Spiegel in December […]
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Google and the right to be forgotten – the truth is out there
After all of the noise surrounding the Google/Spain case, the “deletion” of search results, the paedophiles whose crimes would be washed away and the end of history, the reality of the case is slowly drifting into the media. We were told by the Wall Street Journal three weeks ago that any search results that were […]
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Romania: No communication without registration
Two bills initiated during the past month by the Romanian Government, with the direct and open support from the Romanian Secret Service (SRI), are attempting to kill any kind of electronic communication without prior identification and to expand dramatically the legal access to computer systems. The first bill aims to make the registration of all […]
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Supreme Court of the US on cell phone searches: get a warrant
In the court case Riley vs California, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) affirmed on 25 June what many digital rights activists have been telling a long time: Our mobile phones, especially smartphones, have become such an extension of ourselves that warrantless searches of them violate fundamental rights. Not only that, SCOTUS was […]
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Flawed Dutch government study on ISDS
On 25 July the Dutch government published a study “The Impact of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) in the TTIP“, requested by the Dutch Parliament. The study is flawed. A first reading reveals the following problems: It does not mention that it is nearly impossible to withdraw from trade agreements. Any mistake in the ISDS procedure […]
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The Charter of Digital Rights
During the European elections 2014, EDRi led an innovative campaign to raise the profile of digital rights issues. To this end, EDRi’s members drafted a 10-point Charter of Digital Rights that candidates running for the European Parliament could promise to defend. Eighty-three of the candidates from 21 Member States were elected Members of the European […]
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