Privacy and confidentiality
Privacy is a crucial element of our personal security, enabling free speech and democratic participation. The absolute and fundamental human right to privacy guarantees people respect for their private life and freedom from snooping and unlawful interference. It gives everyone the freedom to be themselves, to express and develop their opinions and ideas with dignity, and to practice their religion, as well as giving journalists and civil society the ability to report on violations of rights by states or businesses. Without sufficient privacy, people’s private interactions are exposed, which can be used to target or discriminate against them.
Filter resources
-
For the “right to analog”: IuRe strengthens the Digital Freedoms program
For almost twenty years, the Czech watchdog Iuridicum Remedium (IuRe) has been fighting for human freedoms in real and digital life. In its Digital Freedoms program, IuRe is currently working on several interlinked digital freedom campaigns that can be found via their new campaigning website.
Read more
-
Is surveilling children really protecting them? Our concerns on the interim CSAM regulation
On 27 July, the European Commission published a Communication on an EU strategy for a more effective fight against child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The Communication indicated several worrying measures that could have devastating effects for your privacy online. The first of these measures is out now.
Read more
-
‘Not On Our Watch’: A public campaign against Google’s jump into our health data
Monopolies, mergers and acquisitions, anti-trust laws. These may seem like tangential or irrelevant issues for privacy and digital rights organisations. But having run our first public petition opposing a big tech merger, we wanted to set out why we think this is an important frontier for people's rights across Europe and indeed across the world.
Read more
-
EDRi with 25 organisations urge Parliament to protect journalists, doctors, lawyers, social services
Together with a coalition of 25 organisations and companies, EDRi urges members of the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) to include strong procedural safeguards in the so called “E-Evidence Regulation”.
Read more
-
Upload filters? Still no, thanks
Together with thousands of protestors, EDRi has fought against mandatory upload filters in the Copyright Directive. Despite the Directive having been adopted, including the infamous Article 13 (now 17) that could lead to upload filters, the Directive allows for some flexibility to prevent the worst impacts on our freedom of expression.
Read more
-
Keep private communications private
On 27 July, the European Commission published a Communication on a EU strategy for a more effective fight against child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The Communication indicates that messaging services (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger…) may see their privacy protections undermined under new legislation that will be proposed this week.
Read more
-
A victory for us all: European Court of Justice makes landmark ruling to invalidate the Privacy Shield
Today, 16 July 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) invalidated the EU-US Privacy Shield. The ruling proves a major victory for EU residents on how their personal data is processed and used by platforms like Facebook.
Read more
-
Spain: Catalan government agrees to improve privacy in schools
The Catalan Department of Education has signed an agreement accepting the plan proposed by Xnet, EDRi member from Spain, titled “Privacy and Democratic Digitization of Educational Centers,” to guarantee the privacy of data and the democratic digitization of schools. The plan foresees the creation of a software-pack and protocols that ensure the educational establishments have alternatives to what until now seemed the only option: the technological dependence on Google and its attached elements, with worrying consequences on individual data.
Read more
-
Web browser privacy: ARTICLE 19 welcomes initiatives to protect users
There are widespread web tracking practices that undermine users’ human rights. However, safeguards against web tracking can and are being deployed by various service providers. EDRi member ARTICLE 19, and more generally EDRi as a whole, support these initiatives to protect user privacy and anonymity as part of a wider shift toward a more rights-respecting sector.
Read more
-
Europol: Non-accountable cooperation with IT companies could go further
There is an ongoing mantra among law enforcement authorities in Europe according to which private companies are indispensable partners in the fight against “cyber-enabled” crimes as they are often in possession of personal data relevant for law enforcement operations. For that reason, police authorities increasingly attempt to lay hands on data held by companies – sometimes in disregard to the safeguards imposed by long-standing judicial cooperation mechanisms.
Read more
-
EU must let its crown jewel shine: GDPR needs progress
On 24 June, the European Commission published the Communication reviewing of the two years of application of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) The Communication received input from the multistakeholder expert group on the application of the GDPR, of which EDRi members Access Now and Privacy International belong to.
Read more
-
Massive political data leak in Malta
After a massive leak of the voter’s list showing the voting preferences, addresses, phones and dates of birth of a majority of the Maltese population, EDRi member noyb.eu will assist the Daphne Foundation and Repubblika in their class action and file complaints about the data breach in various EU Member States.
Read more