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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Dutch parliament blocks patent vote
On 1 July 2004 the Dutch Lower House adopted a motion directed at Minister Brinkhorst and State Secretary Van Gennip (Economic Affairs) to withdraw the Dutch vote in support of the Council of Ministers’ text for the Directive on Software Patents. It was quite a surprise the motion was accepted. In a letter to MPs, […]
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EDRI-gram
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Dutch EU presidency speeds up data retention
The Dutch government is ‘in principle positive’ about the proposal to store the telecommunication traffic data of all 450 million EU citizens for a period of 12 to 36 months. This point of view is expressed in a letter to the Dutch parliament about the proposal. As president of the EU, the Netherlands wish to […]
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Euro ISPA warns against BT web block-list
The UK telephone and internetprovider BT is blocking the access for its customers to an unknown number of websites since 21 June 2004, allegedly containing images of child pornography. So far, BT has not disclosed any information about the banned sites and the precise technical way in which the filtering is deployed, raising serious questions […]
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UK Big Brother Award for US-VISIT Programme
On 28 July, Privacy International has presented the 6th annual UK Big Brother Awards ceremony. Privacy International took the unusual step of awarding a US initiative for the UK awards because of the almost total silence in the US over this programme. US VISIT will fingerprint all visitors to the US from September of this […]
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New French data protection act not unconstitutional
On 29 July 2004 the French Constitutional Council decided that the proposed new data protection act is not unconstitutional, except for one provision (article 9.3), which has been suppressed from the law. The law is an adoption of the European privacy directive of 1995 (1995/46/EC), and was accepted by the French Senate on 15 July […]
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Danish decree on data retention heavily criticised
On 24 March 2004 the Danish Ministry of Justice released a draft Administrative Order and a set of guidelines for mandatory retention of telecommunication traffic data. It is a follow-up to the ‘anti-terror package’ from 6 June 2002 (Act no. 378), that extended the minimum time for data retention to a year and allowed police […]
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EDRI-gram – Number 2.15, 4 August 2004
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Linux-plans Munich threatened by EU software patents
The plans from the city council of Munich, Germany, to migrate all civil servants to open source Linux software, are endangered by the proposed new EU software patents directive. The Greens in Munich have filed 2 motions on 30 July 2004 demanding more research into how the directive affects the project. A cursory search revealed […]
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Opinion European Court of Justice: perpetual rights for databases
On 8 June 2004, the European Court of Justice issued an opinion on four (similar) cases regarding the database directive ‘sui generis’ right. The opinion seems to grant perpetual protection to databases, and confirms grave public concerns about the impact of the directive on the use and re-use of online information. Though the opinion of […]
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Swiss protest against new personal identification number
The Swiss data protection authorities and several political parties have used a governmental consultation round to protest against a proposal to introduce a new sectoral ID number for persons, the SPIN law. According to the privacy authorities, the proposed law violates both constitutional and data protection principles. The new personal identification number would be sectoral […]
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Recommended participation: nanotech and DRM
The European Commission is organising two interesting public consultation rounds, on nanotechnology and on digital rights management (DRM). The consultation on nanotechnology invites public feedback on the communication ‘Towards a European Strategy for Nanotechnology’, in which the Commission proposes an integrated and responsible approach for developing nanosciences and nanotechnologies in Europe. All interested people are […]
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