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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Why should we vote in the EU elections?
What are your plans for the coming days? We have a suggestion: The European elections will take place – and it’s absolutely crucial to go and vote!
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ePrivacy: Private data retention through the back door
Blanket data retention has been prohibited in several court decisions by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the German Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG). In spite of this, some of the EU Member States want to reintroduce it for the use by law enforcement authorities – through a back door in the ePrivacy Regulation.
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Passenger surveillance brought before courts in Germany and Austria
EDRi members Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (GFF, Society for Civil Rights) and Epicenter.works have taken legal action against the mass retention and processing of Passenger Name Records (PNR) before German and Austrian courts and authorities. The European PNR Directive (Directive 2016/681) requires airlines to automatically transfer their passengers’ data to state authorities. There, the data are […]
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EDRi strategic planning: A collective journey towards a strengthened network
On 6 and 7 April, European Digital Rights (EDRi) network held its General Assembly in London. EDRi members elected three new Board members and a new President, Anna Fielder, a long-standing privacy expert, who succeeds Andreas Krisch – EDRi President of ten years who lead the network through years of achievements and milestones. This General […]
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Facebook’s commitments on ToS: Much ado about nothing?
On 9 April 2019, the Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers of the European Commission (DG JUST), together with the Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Network, cheered at the new Facebook commitments to amend its Terms of Services (ToS). The amendments should address the concerns already raised by national competition authorities about the current ToS. They should […]
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Turkish civil society: Declaration on the state of the internet
On the occasion of the Internet Week (11-24 April 2019) and the 26th anniversary of the arrival of the internet in the country, Turkish civil society organisations focusing on digital rights have released a declaration on the state of the internet.
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Austria: New “responsibility” law will lead to self-censorship
Shortly after the EU gave green light to upload filters, two laws were proposed in Austria, with the alleged goal of tackling online hate speech, that rang the alarm bells.
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Facebook Custom Audience illegal without explicit user consent
Online shops and marketers routinely share customer data with Facebook to reach them with targeted advertising. Turns out that in many cases this is illegal. A ground-breaking decision by a German Data Protection Authority (DPA) recently ruled that matching customers’ email addresses with their Facebook accounts requires their explicit consent.
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Will Serbia adjust its data protection framework to GDPR?
After a process that took more than five years, the National Assembly of Serbia finally adopted a new Law on Personal Data Protection in November 2018. The law closely follows EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), almost to the point of literal translation into Serbian of some parts of the text. That was expected, due […]
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Strategic litigation against civil rights violations in police laws
Almost every German state has expanded or is preparing to expand police powers. The police authorities are now more often allowed to interfere with civil rights, even before a specific danger has been identified. They are also given new means to conduct secret surveillance online. EDRi member Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (GFF, Society for Civil Rights) […]
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Protecting personal data world wide: Convention 108+
Almost one year after the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) entered into force in the European Union (EU), the question often arises about what could other countries around the world do to protect their citizens’ personal data. Although there are countries that have data protection laws in place, many still do not, or have laws […]
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Cross-border access to data for law enforcement: Document pool
The European Commission proposed a Regulation on cross-border access to and preservation of electronic data held by service providers and a Directive to require service providers to appoint a legal representative within the EU in April 2018. Since then, the legislative process to adopt them has been fast-tracked, which has prevented any proper assessment of […]
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