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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Copyright: Open letter asking for transparency in implementing guidelines
Today, on 15 January 2020, EDRi joined 41 other human rights and users’ rights organisations to demand increased transparency during the implementation of the EU copyright Directive. Specifically, the open letter asks the European Commission to publish any draft guidelines when available and to include concerns raised by the signing organisations during the stakeholder dialogues […]
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Amazon’s Rekognition shows its true colors
EDRi member Bits of Freedom has been investigating the problems associated with the use of facial recognition by the police in the public space. As part of this investigation they wanted to put this technology to the test themselves. How does facial recognition technology really work? Digital tourism On Dam Square, in the center of […]
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Copyright stakeholder dialogues: Filters can’t understand context
On 16 December 2019, the European Commission held the fourth meeting of the Copyright Directive Article 17 stakeholder dialogues. During the “first phase”, meetings focused on the practices in different industries such as music, games, software, audiovisual and publishing. This meeting was the last of what the Commission called the “second phase”, where meetings were […]
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Your face rings a bell: Three common uses of facial recognition
Not all applications of facial recognition are created equal. In this third installment, we sift through the hype to analyse three increasingly common uses of facial recognition: tagging pictures on Facebook, automated border control gates, and police surveillance.
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Booklet: #EthicalWebDev – guide for ethical website development and maintenance
We’ve finally published our new guide for ethical website development and maintenance, Ethical Web Dev! Explore the guide here
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ECtHR demands explanations on Polish intelligence agency surveillance
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has demanded the Polish government to provide an explanation on surveillance by its intelligence agencies. This is a result of complaints filed with the Strasbourg court in late 2017 and early 2018 by activists from EDRi member Panoptykon Foundation and Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights as well as […]
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Our New Year’s wishes for European Commissioners
EDRi wishes all readers a happy new year 2020! In 2019, we had a number of victories in multiple fields. The European Parliament added necessary safeguards to the proposed Terrorist Content Online (TCO) Regulation to protect fundamental rights against overly broad and disproportionate censorship measures. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled […]
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Indiscriminate data retention considered disproportionate, once again
EDRi’s initial reaction on the press release of the AG Opinion on data retention Today’s Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) Advocate General’s Opinions continue the firmly established case-law of the CJEU considering mass collection of individuals communications data incompatible with EU law. The Advocate General reaffirms that blanket retention of telecommunication data […]
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NCC Report: Online advertising industry is out of control
Today, on 14 January 2020, the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC), a consumers group active on the field of digital rights, denounces in their report “Out of Control” current practices of the adtech industry, including systematic privacy breaches and unlawful behavioural profiling. The report focuses on the analysis of data traffic from ten popular apps such […]
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Austrian government hacking law is unconstitutional
On 11 December 2019, the Austrian Constitutional Court decided that the surveillance law that permits the use of spying software to read encrypted messages violates the fundamental right to respect for private life (article 8 ECHR), the fundamental right to data protection (§ 1 Austrian data protection law) and the constitutionally granted right that prohibits unreasonable searches (Art 9 Austrian bill of rights – Staatsgrundgesetz).
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Spain: New law threatens internet freedoms
On 5 November 2019, the Royal Decree-Law 14/2019 that had been adopted on 31 October was published in the Spanish Official State Gazette (BOE). This was just five days before the general elections that would take place on 10 November, under an undefined “exceptionality and urgency”, and justified by the “challenges posed by new technologies […]
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Online content moderation: Where does the Commission stand?
The informal discussions (trilogues) between the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission are progressing on the Terrorist Content Regulation (TCO, aka “TERREG”). While users’ safeguards and rights-protective measures remain the Parliament’s red lines, the Commission presses the co-legislators to adopt what was a pre-elections public relations exercise, rather than […]
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