Surveillance and data retention
Surveillance is when an individual or organisation is watching, tracking, filtering, analysing or blocking what you can see and do online or offline. It can be targeted on a specific individual (such as someone suspected of a crime) or it can be done indiscriminately (such as on all users from a particular country), also known as mass surveillance. Surveillance - and the retention of surveillance data - can impose restrictions on our fundamental rights in the digital environment by interfering with our freedom online, or by using digital technology to follow our offline movements, in order to gain an intimate picture of our lives, our beliefs and our interactions.
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Control ©: defending free online communication through litigation
Former Member of the European Parliament Felix Reda has joined the EDRi member German Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (GFF, Society for Civil Rights). The copyright reform activist will coordinate control ©, a new project to defend freedom of communication.
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Technology, migration, and illness in the times of COVID-19
In our ongoing work on technology and migration, we examine the impacts of the current COVID-19 pandemic on the rights of people on the move and the increasingly worrying use of surveillance technology and AI at the border and beyond.
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COVID-19 pandemic adversely affects digital rights in the Balkans
Cases of arbitrary arrests, surveillance, phone tapping, privacy breaches and other digital rights violations have drastically increased in Central and Southeast Europe as governments started imposing emergency legislation to combat the COVID-19 outbreak.
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#PrivacyCamp20: Event Summary
The 8th edition of Privacy Camp revolved in 2020 around the topic of Technology and Activism, the schedule being composed of ten sessions in different formats. What were these about? Read below a summary of each discussion, with references to full session recordings.
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Facial recognition: Homo Digitalis calls on Greek DPA to speak up
In the spring of 2019, the Hellenic Police signed a €4 million contract with Intracom Telecom, a global telecommunication systems and solutions vendor, for a smart policing project. Seventy five percent of the project is funded by the Internal Security Fund (ISF) 2014-2020 of the European Commission.
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Surveillance by default: PATRIOT Act extended?
On 15 March, Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, and several other similar legal provisions, were due to expire and begin the process of reform and review to incorporate new legal protections of privacy. However, as a result of a coordinated effort by both chambers of the US Congress, the provisions may be extended for at least 77 days.
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Facial Recognition & Biometric Mass Surveillance: Document Pool
Despite evidence that public facial recognition and other forms of biometric mass surveillance infringe on a wide range EU fundamental rights, European authorities and companies are deploying these systems at a rapid rate. This has happened without proper consideration for how such practices invade people's privacy on an enormous scale; amplify existing inequalities; and undermine democracy, freedom and justice.
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Stuck under a cloud of suspicion: Profiling in the EU
As facial recognition technologies are gradually rolled out in police departments across Europe, anti-racism groups blow the whistle on the discriminatory over-policing of racialised communities linked to the increasing use of new technologies by law enforcement agents.
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Germany: Invading refugees’ phones – security or population control?
In its new study, EDRi member Society for Civil Rights (GFF) examines how German authorities sniff out refugees’ phones. The aim of “data carrier evaluation” is supposed to be determining a person’s identity and their country of origin. However, in reality, it violates refugees’ rights and does not produce any meaningful results.
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ECtHR: UK Police data retention scheme violated the right to privacy
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Immigration, iris-scanning and iBorderCTRL
Technologies like automated decision-making, biometrics, and unpiloted drones are increasingly controlling migration and affecting millions of people on the move. This second blog post in our series on AI and migration highlights some of these uses, to show the very real impacts on people’s lives, exacerbated by a lack of meaningful governance and oversight mechanisms […]
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Click here to allow notifications in cross-border access to data
From a fundamental rights perspective, it’s essential that the proposal enabling cross-border access to data for criminal proceedings (“e-evidence”) includes a notification mechanism. However, this requirement of a notification seems to be out of the question for those advocating for “efficiency” of cross-border criminal investigations, even if that means abandoning the most basic procedural safeguards […]
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