Privacy and data protection
Privacy and data protection are essential for us to live, connect, work, create, organise and more. Governments and companies have long used mass surveillance for control trying to legitimise snooping for health, security or other reasons. The near-total digitisation of our lives has made it easier to control, profile and profit from our attention, data, bodies and behaviours in ways that are very difficult for us to understand and challenge. European data protection standards such as the GDPR are a good step forward but we need more to effectively ensure enforcement and protection against unlawful surveillance practices.
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New Cybercrime Protocol: weak safeguards against big risks of abuse
In 2017, the Council of Europe (CoE) and its Cybercrime Committee started preparing an additional protocol to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime – a new tool for law enforcement authorities (LEAs) to have access to data held by private companies in the context of criminal investigations.
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AdTech is watching you!
The reality is that AdTech target mothers who just had stillbirths with baby ads, and serial gamblers who are trying to quit with gambling ads, or simply send creepy ads.
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Companies are now allowed to scan your private communications
“Any restrictions on children’s right to freedom of expression in the digital environment, such as filters, including safety measures, should be lawful, necessary and proportionate”and any digital surveillance of children “should respect the child’s right to privacy and should not be conducted routinely, indiscriminately” nor “should it take place without the right to object to such surveillance”.
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EDRi-gram, 5 May 2021
The shady AdTech business model used by Big Tech targets mothers who just had stillbirths with baby ads, and serial gamblers who are trying to quit with gambling ads. EDRi is working to create a better digital future, where people are put before profit. Will you donate to us to help make that happen?
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Luca contact tracing app: CCC calls for an immediate moratorium
A dubious business model, defective software, irregularities in the awarding of contracts: EDRi member, Chaos Computer Club (CCC) demands an immediate end to federal funding for the “Luca” contact tracing app.
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Why EU needs to be wary that AI will increase racial profiling
Central to predictive policing systems is the notion that risk and crime can be objectively and accurately forecasted. Not only is this presumption flawed, it demonstrates a growing commitment to the idea that data can and should be used to quantify, track and predict human behaviour. The increased use of such systems is part of a growing ideology that social issues can be solved by allocating more power, resources - and now technologies - to police.
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E-Evidence: trilogues kick off on safeguards vs. efficiency
The Regulation on European production and preservation orders for electronic evidence in criminal matters (E-Evidence) aims to create clear rules on how a judicial authority in one Member State can request electronic evidence from a service provider in another Member State. One such use case would be requesting user data from a platform in another EU country during an investigation. We wrote about our main issues in the past.
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Upcoming judgment against mass surveillance in France
On Wednesday 21 April, the Conseil d'Etat (France's highest administrative court) will issue its final decision in the most important case that EDRi's observer La Quadrature du Net (LQDN) has ever brought against the intelligence services. This will be the end of six years of proceedings, dozens of briefs and countless twists and turns that have made LQDN what it is today.
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Thousands Expected to Sue Facebook in Mass Action Against Privacy Breach
EDRi's member Digital Rights Ireland (DRI) will sue Facebook to recover damages for those affected by the recent breach of personal data by Facebook, a first for legal actions against tech companies in Europe. See how you can join the lawsuit if you were affected.
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EDRi-gram, 22 April 2021
Issues of non-discrimination and fundamental rights would have to be at the core of the approach to artificial intelligence, rather than considered after competition and industrial policy. A truly people-centred AI regulation would take a step back and acknowledge the inherent harms AI will perpetuate if deployed for certain purposes.
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Buy a phone, get a tracker: unauthorized tracking code illegally installed on Android phones
EDRi's member noyb launched further action against Google’s AAID (Android Advertising Identifier), following similar complaints against Apple’s IDFA. The somewhat hidden ID allows Google and all apps on the phone to track a user and combine information about online and mobile behaviour. While these trackers clearly require the users’ consent (as known from “cookie banners”), Google neglects this legal requirement. noyb therefore filed a complaint against Google’s tracking code AAID.
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Regulating Border Tech Experiments in a Hostile World
We are facing a growing panopticon of technology that limits people’s movements, their ability to reunite with their families, and at the worst of times, their ability to stay alive. Power and knowledge monopolies are allowed to exist because there is no unified global regulatory regime governing the use of new technologies, creating laboratories for high-risk experiments with profound impacts on people’s lives.
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