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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Content regulation – what’s the (online) harm?
In recent years, the national legislators in EU Member States have been pushing for new laws to combat negative societal phenomena such as hateful or terrorist content online. These regulatory efforts have one common denominator: they shift the focus from conditional intermediary liability to holding intermediaries directly responsible for the dissemination of illegal content on their platforms.
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Right a wrong: ePrivacy now!
When the European Commission proposed to replace the outdated and improperly enforced 2002 ePrivacy Directive with a new ePrivacy Regulation in January 2017, it marked a cautiously hopeful moment for digital rights advocates across Europe. With the backdrop of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), adopted in May 2018, Europe took a giant leap ahead […]
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Why weak encryption is everybody’s problem
Representatives of the UK Home Department, US Attorney General, US Homeland Security and Australian Home Affairs have joined forces to issue an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg. In their letter of 4 October, they urge Facebook to halt plans for end-to-end (aka strong) encryption across Facebook’s messaging platforms, unless such plans include “a means for […]
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CJEU ruling on fighting defamation online could open the door for upload filters
Today, on 3 October 2019, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) gave its ruling in the case C‑18/18 Glawischnig-Piesczek v Facebook. The case is related to injunctions obliging a service provider to stop the dissemination of a defamatory comment. Some aspects of the decision could pose a threat for freedom of expression, in particular that of political dissidents who may be accused of defamatory practices.
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CJEU on cookies: ‘Consent or be tracked’ is not an option
European Digital Rights (EDRi) welcomes the CJEU's confirmation that under the current data protection framework, cookies can only be set if users have given consent that is valid under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
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Mozilla Fellow Petra Molnar joins us to work on AI & discrimination
Starting on 1 October, Petra Molnar will join our team as a Mozilla Fellow. She is a lawyer specialising in migration, human rights, and technology, and has a Masters of Social Anthropology from York University, a Juris Doctorate from the University of Toronto, and an LL.M in International Law from the University of Cambridge. Mozilla […]
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PNR complaint advances to the Austrian Federal Administrative Court
On 19 August 2019, Austrian EDRi member epicenter.works lodged a complaint with the Austrian data protection authority (DPA) against the Passenger Name Records (PNR) Directive. After only three weeks, on 6 September, they received the response from the DPA: The complaint was rejected. That sounds negative at first, but is actually good news. The complaint […]
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Portugal: Data retention complaint reaches the Constitutional Court
September 2019 brought us long-awaited developments regarding the situation of data retention in Portugal. The Justice Ombudsman decided to send the Portuguese data retention law to the Constitutional Court, following the Court of Justice of the European Union’s (CJEU’s) case law on blanket retention of data that lead to invalidation of Directive 2006/24/EC. This decision […]
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Why EU passenger surveillance fails its purpose
The EU Directive imposing the collection of flyers’ information (Passenger Name Record, PNR) was adopted in April 2016, the same day as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The collection of PNR data from all flights going in and out of Brussels has a strong impact on the right of privacy of individuals and it […]
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Facebook users blocked simply for mentioning a name?
Merely writing or including two words, in this case “Tommy Robinson”, in a Facebook post or link is enough to get the post removed and the writer blocked. At least it seems so in Denmark and Sweden.
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Your mail, their ads. Your rights?
In the digital space, “postal services” often snoop into your online conversations in order to market services or products according to what they find out from your chats. A law meant to limit this exploitative practice is stalled by the Council of European Union
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Poland challenges copyright upload filters before the CJEU
On 24 May 2019, Poland initiated a legal challenge (C-401/19) before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) against Article 17 of the Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market. EDRi member Centrum Cyfrowe Foundation has previously tried to get access to the complaint using freedom of information (FOI) requests, without success. […]
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