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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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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COVID-Tech: Emergency responses to COVID-19 must not extend beyond the crisis
In EDRi's new series on COVID-19, we will explore the critical principles for protecting fundamental rights while curtailing the spread of the virus, as outlined in the EDRi network's statement on the virus. Each post in this series will tackle a specific issue at the intersection of digital rights and the global pandemic in order to explore broader questions about how to protect fundamental rights in a time of crisis.
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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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Press Release: EDRi calls for fundamental rights-based responses to COVID-19
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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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Competition law: what to do against Big Tech’s abuse?
This is the second article in a series dealing with competition law and Big Tech. The aim of the series is to look at what competition law has achieved when it comes to protecting our digital rights, where it has failed to deliver on its promises, and how to remedy this.
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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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Open letter: Civil society urges Member States to respect the principles of the law in Terrorist Content Online Regulation
On 27 March 2020, European Digital Rights (EDRi) and 12 of its member organisations sent an open letter to representatives of Member States in the Council of the EU. In the letter, we voice our deep concern over the proposed legislation on the regulation of terrorist content online and what we view as serious potential threats to fundamental rights of privacy, freedom of expression, etc.
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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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EDRi calls for fundamental rights-based responses to COVID-19
Some of the actions taken by governments and businesses under exceptional Coronavirus circumstances today, can have significant repercussions on freedom of expression, privacy and other human rights both today and tomorrow.
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Terrorist Content Online Regulation: Time to get things right
Closed-door negotiations (“trilogues”) on the Regulation to prevent the dissemination of terrorist content continue in Brussels. After our open letter from December things have moved on fairly slowly at first, but, recently, new texts are quickly being discussed in order to try to reach an agreement soon. Nonetheless, according to MEP Patrick Breyer, many key issues remain open for discussion.
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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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